


Sink The Ship

by amatchforyourmadness



Series: but the words came from the fire [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang would like to help take down the fire nation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula & Friends will kill his ass, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula (Avatar) is A Good Sister, But apparently he is not invited to the Take Down Fire Lord Ozai event, Episode: s02e01 The Avatar State, Fuck Ozai All My Homies Hate Ozai, Gen, Lieutenant Jee Adopts Fire Nation Royalty, The 41st is down to treason, The White Lotus finds this course of events questionable, Uncle Iroh Goes Full On Dragon Of The West, Zuko (Avatar) is a Good Brother
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26518369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amatchforyourmadness/pseuds/amatchforyourmadness
Summary: “Father sent me to get the Avatar.”“He already sent me to capture the Avatar, 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘰.”“Yes, but the Avatar wasn’t actually around three years ago.” She says slowly, like she’s explaining it to a really dumb child. “Now he is. So Father sent someone competent this time.”Her brother crosses his arm, like a child.“Then why are you here, if you’re meant to be out there 𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 the Avatar?”“That would be because Father sent me to kill you.”Zuko’s good eye widens. Uncle bodily shoves himself between them, hands ready to fire bend at her. Azula rolls her eyes.“I’m not going to.”(The Avatar State AU where Azula commits a tiny bit of treason, Zuko becomes one with the righteous sort of rage that leads to patricide and Iroh is not sure if this is the best way to stop the war, but he'll go with it).
Relationships: Azula & Iroh (Avatar), Azula & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: but the words came from the fire [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870078
Comments: 161
Kudos: 567
Collections: The Best of Avatar the Last Airbender





	1. 0: A Nice Family Reunion With Tea, Threats and Treason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).



> A third fic in 8 days? More likely than you think. Head empty, only fics.
> 
> Watch me go wild with these AUs, creating the Fire Siblings content that I have craved for and that MuffinLance inspired upon me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula pays her dear brother and not as dear uncle a visit. She has bad news and good news, but both sort of news will be a headache to deal with.

* * *

𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 0

𝐴 𝑁𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝐹𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑅𝑒𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑊𝑖𝑡𝒉 𝑇𝑒𝑎, 𝑇𝒉𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛

* * *

This place is pitiful, Azula decides after mere five minutes sitting on it, but then again so are Uncle and Zuko.

Maybe the place reflects who they are.

Still, it’s not the worst mission Father has ever sent her on and, if she plays her cards right, it might be her most rewarding one.

The task had been given to her on her knees (like the perfect daughter Father had taken great pains to sharpen into an approval-seeking weapon flawlessly) in the Throne Room and was simple enough, both in wording as in content: to track down Zuko and Iroh and deliver them to the Fire Lord to be suitably punished.

It did not take a prodigy to see what ‘suitable punishment’ for alleged treason would be when directed at his hated older brother and the son he casted away, especially in the eyes of a man who had thought burning a 13-yeard-old’s face off equivalent to the crime of speaking out of turn.

Azula didn’t much care for Iroh, but her muscles had frozen at the thought of bringing Zuko anywhere near Ozai’s reach again.

( It was difficult to forget a scream like that, difficult as a fire bender to forget the smell of burned flesh, and unwise to do so. It was a lesson, after all, and one she had not had to suffer through to learn.

It would be ungrateful of her to forget what her brother had burned so she would learn. )

Zuko was weak and whiny and insufferable, weak flamed and in many aspects a danger to himself and others; but he was, for better or worse, the brother Agni had bestowed her.

She agrees with him, calls his son a failure, takes a royal sloop equipped with fineries and luxuries to match her station and Ozai’s esteem if she is to rise to the challenge, fills it with only the most loyal soldiers to their Princess’ cause, those who would obey her every command and sets off to finding Uncle and Zuzu wherever they were, hidden away in the Earth Kingdom in disgrace and self-preservation.

Her nose scrunches up at the room around her.

Maybe more disgrace than self-preservation.

It was cruel and only mildly intentional to arrive at his doorstep on the day she had; if the anniversary of his banishment did not speak to either his good sense or his heart of hearts, there would be little hope that this warning would be any best received than her previous attempt had been, even though the contents were remarkably similar and well-proven to boost.

Azula sighs.

The pains a dutiful sister must endure.

What was even taking them so long, anyways? She could swear on Agni, if the idiots had managed to get captured on their way home, maybe she should give up the spoonful of hope for their competence she held and just do this alone.

Honestly, she should have sent an errand boy up this mountain and waited on her palanquin with biscuits and servants to pamper her about instead of sandy shells, bending lightening to work through her nerves and to be ready when inevitable confrontation took place— Though, maybe, neither Iroh nor Zuko would take kindly to lethal bending as a welcome.

 _Ah_ , she thinks at the approaching steps and her Uncle’s voice, _Finally._

Iroh walks in first, careless and with his guard down, not noticing his beloved niece in the corner, sat in the shadows in favor of throwing a bagfull of more shells over a table (she’s sat by another one with even more shells, what is he even going to do with those? Shuriken-throw them?) and praising their beauty. Azula cannot blame Zuko when he ignores her, though that might be because he snaps at Uncle and that makes her day.

“Hello, brother.” She finally says, because obviously waiting for one of those two incompetents to notice her is too much hope. Half a spoonful it is. “Uncle.” She adds, as the afterthought he rightfully is.

“What are you doing here?”

Not even a hello, how sweet. He clearly missed her, is just short of crying out of joy. She thought Zuko was a lover of plays and theater. He should appreciate her dramatics.

( She thinks of delivering him to Father, after all, just out of principle. )

“In my country, we exchange a pleasant hello before asking questions.” She answers, narrowing her eyes disapprovingly at him and crossing her arms as she stands. He really ought to be gladder to see his little sister after all those years, even if she had laughed at him burning. It had been merely strategical, he can't possibly be hung up on that. “Have you become uncivilized so soon, Zuzu?”

“Don’t call me that!” He snaps at her again, and once again Azula thinks strangling him is not out of the picture… Yet.

“To what do we owe this honor?” Uncle asks, as if he has any place in this conversation, as if Azula wouldn’t just hand him over for Father to distract himself with and keep Zuko hidden. After strangling him, that is.

“It must be a family trait. Both of you so quick to get to the point.” She replies, sweetly, her lips curling into a smile as she turns her gaze to Iroh as she crushes his shell just to watch his face fall. He shuts up. Good.

“Father sent me to get the Avatar.”

“He already sent _me_ to capture the Avatar, _three years ago_.”

“Yes, but the Avatar wasn’t actually around three years ago.” She says slowly, like she’s explaining it to a really dumb child. “Now he is. So Father sent someone competent this time.”

Her brother crosses his arm, like a child.

“Then why are you here, if you’re meant to be out there _catching_ the Avatar?”

“That would be because Father sent me to kill you.”

Zuko’s good eye widens. Uncle bodily shoves himself between them, hands ready to fire bend at her. Azula rolls her eyes.

“I’m not going to.” She states the obvious.

If she was going to kill him, this would be a terrible first step.

“You’re lying!” Zuko shouts the words that stand as the oldest cliche of their relationship.

“Granted I have done plenty of that before, but use those two braincells Mother gave you and think. What do I have to gain telling you Father wants to kill you? What did I have to gain the first time?”

Ah, here he goes. Look at the cogs begin to turn, her brother dabbling on rational thinking.

“Father heard rumors of plans to overthrow him, treasanous plots, so he sent me with the excuse that the failed Siege on The North was his Spirits-loving brother’s, who had to save the moon and wreck the ocean’s wrath upon our defenseless soldiers, ands yours, for being a failure and not finding the Avatar sooner.”

“He thinks we are behind the treasonous plots?” Iroh asks.

“You, perhaps. Zuko, absolutely not. Nevertheless, there’s no need to fret about those rumors.” Azula explains and does her very best not to smile. “Most of those plans were false, surely, even if two or three of them do hold weight.”

“Such as?” Iroh asks, eyes cunning and narrowed. He must have caught that suppressed smile, but hadn’t she subdued him into shutting up? That’s twice he’s spoke now. Oh, well, she’ll just break more shells if he speaks again.

“Such as mine.” She says, and feels the spike of pride as both their eyes grow huge while staring at her. “Of course, my name was not spoken, I’m not a lousy conspiracionist. But he did keep such a tight leash on me it was difficult to do much more than light plotting back in the Palace.”

“Pardon us, Azula.” Uncle interrupts her yet again, and ignores the way she narrows her eyes at him. “But it does sound far fetched.”

Note to self: burn down all the shells he has collected.

“You might not trust me, Uncle. I commend you for having the strength of mind to you still, to question what you’re told.” His nose flares only slightly, but it does flare. He can still tell backhanded compliments from court too, lovely. He just might survive this, then. “Yet, even though you have made no attempt to know me, you are Father’s brother. You know him. Think over my words, do they ring untrue to you?”

Uncle doesn’t answer.

Cowards never do.

“I always thought Father would…” Zuko whispers, staring out of the window in the green trees and grass and the peaceful scenery that does not reflect this room. “Not regret, but… I hoped he would want me back. If I did what he asked me to, that he would welcome me home.”

“He won’t.” Azula says, swiftly, ignoring the way Iroh glares daggers with his eyes at her. There are more important things to be done here than coddle his hurt feelings and foolish hopes of a better father than they actually have. "And he wouldn't."

Zuko was left three years with his own mind and his own wishes, three years of excusing their father’s action and trying to find himself justifications that would have him be the man from when he was a younger child and the world was good. Azula spent three years under Father’s thumb, learning just how caring he actually was.

Still, Zuko was left three years with his too-idealistic heart and the craving to be understood.

“I see you need time to take this in.” Azula says, distancing herself from him and his hurt feelings, least her dear Uncle thinks she’s trying to manipulate her brother. “I’ll call on you tomorrow. Goodnight.”

Azula leaves and is only mildly disappointed her brother doesn’t follow.

* * *

“It’s unbelievable.” Zuko says, torn between the hesitation in trusting Azula who lies as if her tongue was made for the craft and the way Uncle made no attempt to defend Father’s actions when he had asked ‘do you think he would have killed me?’. “Azula plotting against Father?”

“It is unbelievable.” Uncle agrees, quietly. “I have never known Azula to disobey my brother’s orders.”

Zuko clenches his jaw and doesn’t say that she has disobeyed Father so many times, in so many ways. Doesn’t mention how she would slip away from her tutors to help him firebend when she was young and his spark had just manifested himself and Father had not torn them apart and Mother hadn’t vanished. Doesn’t mention a small shadow by his bedside, whispers of ‘Zuko, wake up’ and bowls of rice being given over his sheets when he was sent to bed without dinner, after barely having eaten lunch. Doesn’t mention the way her smile had been sharp but her eyes had been something else when she had been cruel to him again for no reason and said ‘How else would you learn? No one else would just use words to strike you down. Grow a spine, you crybaby’ like a lesson. The chanting in his room that he took for lies but might as well have been a warning.

None of those acts had been treason. This, however, very much is.

“You don’t know her very well.” He mutters, a reinstatement of her words from before, and doesn’t mean it as an accusation but Uncle flinches anyways.

“Perhaps I don’t.” He says through a grimace, and doesn’t elaborate.

Silence falls over the room.

Yet, hope is loud in his mind, weaving thoughts and trying to fit the pieces together in a way he can see a whole picture that seems agreeable as a whole instead of nice only in parts.

“I… I think she may actually care about me.”

A fierce something burns behind Uncle’s golden eyes, he stands and turns to him, his voice louder than the calm, pensive tone from before.

“I care about you.” Uncle takes a step forward, but Zuko finds himself taking a step back. Solely because of the yelling, they both know. Iroh softens his tone. “And if she’s acting like she does, it may not be for the reasons you imagine.”

_Dad is going to kill you._

_That would be because Father sent me here to kill you._

“So you do think Azula is lying?” He asks, trying not to be hopeful and failing, like he fails at everything else. “Father cares for me?”

Iroh saddens at that, it must be rather pathetic to see someone try to convince himself he’s loved by people who have not shown it in years.

“Not in the way you would want him to.” His uncle says, kind and gentle, warm even.

Warm like Ozai's hand to his shoulder when walking through the hills of Ember Island had been, or like Uncle’s hold on his hand as he took his first steps into the Wani’s deck after months of infection and fever, his face still wrapped with gauze and burn salve, or like a tiny blue flame had been when a seven year old had sprung up on her palm and shown it to him.

“So if Azula isn’t lying, it can’t be because she cares for me, and if she is, Father can’t care either?” Zuko says, cautious and swallowing down the hot ball of anger in his throat so it burns his stomach instead of the house they have for the night. “Are you the only one who can care for me and go unquestioned, Uncle?”

“I’m only saying that, in our family, things aren’t always as they seem.”

Zuko _knows that_ , he has _always_ _known that_.

Has known it from the calculating look to his grandfather’s eyes to how Lu Ten was only affectionate to him when there were no court eyes around to mother’s disappearance to how he was pitched against his sister to turning around to face an admiral and finding his father. He knows that, he’s not stupid, but if he doesn’t think try and think that something good might actually happen one of these days for more foolish that it makes hims sound he will not keep going.

He’s holding his small amount of hope with two hands and much effort, but he can’t help it when it drips through his fingers and falls and evades him, and he’s so angry and so lost. He cracks and snaps and yells, because that’s what he knows.

“I think you are exactly what you seem. Zuko says, shaking because he’s being pulled in too many directions and he waits to go home and he wants Father to love him and Azula to care but believing in one means giving up on the other and Uncle is just asking him to give up on _both_. “A lazy, mistrustful, shallow old man, who’s jealous of his brother and doesn’t care about his niece!”

Zuko heaves angry breaths and walks deeper into the house they’re in, to his room. To close the door and burn alone.

* * *

Colonel Fusao knew war very well, one did not earn his rank without such knowledge.

He was also very knowledgeable at teenagers who partook in wars instead of being protected in their homes, relative innocent or as innocent as their nation allowed children to be. Colonel Fusao, however, was not good with adults.

The crew in princess Azula’s royal sloop wasn’t like other war ship’s crews spread through the oceans or anchored in various corners of the world that might sail by their side against the homeland or sail against them ready for attack. The men and women in the _Ryujin_ are not much older than him, a year or two, and all under his command, which was somewhat strange, given they had started as new meat, 1000 foot soldiers freshly drafted and barely trained and ready to be marched against slaughter with no hopes of surviving such an ordeal.

Except they had. They had survived and been thrown against a lesser bloodbath, and walked out with 976 men and the name of those behind the change in their fate in their lips. Then, another bloodbath and they were 890, another battle and they were 827 and then they were broken in smaller numbers and groups to be spread through other battalions and under other commanders and they were looser and lesser.

Other ships must have young recruits, he knows, but most of those young recruits are not like Fusao’s soldiers, do not have the story that hangs above the number printed on their service reports. Fusao knows each of the 735 survivors by name, he knows where they’re stationed, exchange monthly letters to those in charge of their groups officially or unofficially. He knows the _Ryujin_ ’s crews by name and memories and shared scars, knows their families and the places they called home before Princess Azula rallied them all to this new cause, some to this new ship, this new home.

Colonel Fusao was 23 and the younger member of the destroyed ship’s crew was 21, but he knew he was older even than a man who could survive the Siege of the North and arctic seas. He didn’t survive as long as he did actually being 23.

Their youngest member is 21, but most of them are either on their thirties or over their thirties, and Colonel Fusao did not trust people as a rule. It made life easier, to keep people at arm's lenght, made it easier to slit their throats if you ddin't know their names. 

“What if he doesn’t come?” Is whispered by a man’s voice, low and quiet and as fearful of the possibility as Fusao himself.

He stops by the door’s entrance, listening into the conversation while they don’t notice him.

“Then we go there and drag the brat back to the ship and Prince Iroh will follow.” A woman’s self assured voice let's out, loud and unrelenting, earning laughter from her small crew.

“I would like to remind you.” Fusao finally speaks up, reproachful even though he’s speaking to a a crew that is ragtag in nature and of a boat who’s already sunk but who probably knows the prince better than him. “That you are speaking of a royal person and a son of the line of Agni.”

Most of his battalion survived, but there were people… There were _good people_ that didn’t, there was a woman who liked to play cards that didn’t.

_‘Loosen up, Fusao! You will be stiff enough when you're dead, no need to practice while you are alive.’_

He knows he’s living in borrowed time that maimed a boy and sharpened a girl, all while they’re entering a quiet war that will make 735 lessen even more.

Still, the boy of 21 looks at him with eyes haunted by another element and the crewman by his side shifts so her body is slightly in front of his, drawing his attention towards her and the way she smiles knowingly and sharp.

“He’s a brat, and if he comes you will learn that in two days max. Just you wait.”

He shakes his head and walks away, but he knows he will wait. He's been waiting all this time.

* * *

> _For His Majesty, Fire Lord Ozai of the Great Nation, Agni’s Will on Earth._
> 
> _I have successfully tracked down both traitors of blood and nation in a fire nation spa by the northern coast of the Earth Kingdom. Unfortunately, due to an underling’s incompetence, my attempt of seizing them prisoners was thwarted and Iroh led Zuko into his escape._
> 
> _I await your orders either to chase them by land or air._
> 
> _Your Faithful Daughter,_
> 
> _Crown Princess Azula of the Bloodline of Agni, Heir to the Dragon Throne, Decedent of Sozin and Fighter to His Crusade, Wielder of the Blue Flame and Youngest Master of the Cold Fire._

* * *

Breakfast was a tense silent thing in the _Ryujin_. Not on all of the cafeteria, just around their table. People did not speak and eyes kept straying to them distrustingly, like they knew better than to let their guards down around strangers, even if they were strangers of a same nation. The old man shares bread with the Crewman by his side, reassuring grunts are offered over mugs of coffee or tea to an Engineer and a Pikeswoman, the quiet expectation (because they know better than to call it hopefulness) of reunion lays under the two-weeks-long acquired taste for distrust.

“The Princes are coming!” Comes a voice from above and the cafeteria goes deathly silent, enough that the running footsteps can be heard making their way down towards them. All the 735 heads of the Ryujin’s crew and the 20 left of the Wani’s crew turn to greet an officer as she barges into the iron room. A girl’s face under the helmet, breaking into a bright grin, turning to her Colonel, a respectful flame shaped around her hands that doesn’t match the informality with which she addresses him. “Fusao, the Prince is coming.”

He takes in a breath, young in his features all of the sudden instead of the stony faced man who saw too much too soon, his lips almost twitch into a smile. The Colonel eyes lock against the Lieutenant’s all the way across seven tables, a wordless conversation ensues. The older of them nods, and the younger gets up and gathers a hundred or so of his men to form a honorable formation above in the deck for their welcome.

The Lieutenant stands up and makes his ways to royal quarters, towards the only one occupied room, knuckles knocking against the door. 

“Princess?”

“Enter.” Azula’s voice comes, aloof and commanding. He does, finds her already dressed in full armor, an empty plate of breakfast sat aside on a table, red ribbon on her hands as she works her hair. She arches a brow at him through the mirror. “Well?”

“Your brother is coming.” He says and watches her pause, half-through tying her hair in a topknot to turn around to look at him.

He doesn’t mention that quiet naked look, how her face loses porcelain and ice and the steel from court and there’s just a child for a split second, happy and hopeful to have her brother back. It lasts only a second, she’s a girl one moment and the next she’s a daughter of Agni. She’s on her feet and they’re marching up the stairs in no time.

But Jee remembers that look, he had seen it yesterday when she arrived after speaking to the Princes without them in toll and said ‘I gave them a night to think my words over’ before pointedly not-locking herself in her room, only closing the door and ordering that she’s not to be bothered and he had seen it when she first invited him to her office and after military standard talk asked ‘ _tell me about your last ship_ ’.

Fire Lord Ozai broke his children in different ways, but they share some similar cracks.

He stands behind his youngest, whom he’s come to know for only a month, and squints against the contrast of sudden brightness, towards the mountains and his eldest, whom he spent three years minus a month learning to care for.

* * *

“Brother, Uncle, welcome.” She greets them, a too genuine smile to her lips, but they’re too far to tell and her men won’t say a word about it. Nevertheless, the bowing that comes after helps give her five seconds or so to pull her act together. “I’m pleased you decided to join me.”

When she stands, there’s still a hint of a smile to her lips, but she’s much more in control, even as her brother makes her way towards her and one by one her soldiers bow as he advances. Zuko looks confused, lost somehow, and Iroh still looks like he’s ready to throw her overboard, grab Zuko and run for the hills with him.

“Colonel Fusao, ready the ship to leave port.” Azula commands, just in case her Uncle _does_ try that. He grimaces, clearly uncomfortable.

Too bad, she doesn’t care.

“You have more soldiers than you’d have needed to kill me.” He says in guise of greeting, but she’s not angry at him about the rudeness.

Fine, not _too angry_ about his general rudeness and lack of civility and apparent inability to thank her, but only because she could see him doing his best with his two braincells and limited intellect to understand what is so familiar about that name, why people are bowing so low, why they all look so grateful when they look at him. Dum Dum, even if he worked those two braincells of him until they fried up he would not understand her brilliancy.

She’ll put him out of his thinking misery, tho, because she’s a great sister and she loves watching people react to her brilliant plans.

“Don’t you recognize them, brother?” Azula asks, walking leisurely towards his side and then planting herself to his left, unmoving. “The 41st have come to repay you their debt.”

For a moment, she thinks she has broken him, because he bodily freezes and stops breathing. Mildly alarming but not-death inducing, hence breaking him. It would do very badly to have broken her brother right after cornering him into joining her into her attempts of treason. She was willing to put up with Uncle for her brother in name of their building trust, she is not willing to put up with Uncle if her brother is going to be catatonic however. That is until his eyes water and he seems ready to cry, at which point she realizes he’s not catatonic, she’s just struck an emotional nerve and silently suffers though his outpour of feelings.

“They… They survived?” Zuzu asks in a shaky voice.

“Seven hundred and thirty five of us. Thanks to Your Highnesses.” Fusao says, voice heavy with emotion and eyes damp, but not once losing his composure as he kneels in front of Azula and her brother and shape the flame with his hand as he bows. “We’ll fight for you until our dying breath.”

Zuko looks crestfallen, reaches his hand to help Fusao stand and Fusao looks as surprised by the act as Zuko is about his current survival.

“Thank you.” Zuko whispers.

“You have nothing to thank me for, Your Highness.” Fusao says in a high pitched tone that she would sometimes elicit from generals back home just ot see them run like the rabbitmouses they were. “I owe you my life. We all do.”

“The others…?” Zuko looks behind them, to the the soldiers standing at a respectful distnace. His voice cracks like ti did when he was 12. “Are they all here?”

“Some of them.” Azula answers, a secretive smile to her lips. “Don’t fret, I know where the others are.”

“Azula…” Zuzu says, looking at her as if she’s not herself, but he would keep this version of herself for as long as he could, even when his voice sounds horrified and as a warning. “This is…”

 _Treason_. She knows.

“Whoever rises to the throne first pardons the other.” Comes rolling off her tongue, playful and nonchalant, as if they’re 8 and 10 again, on the roof of the Palace, playing a dangerous game without knowing it.

Zuko snorts a wet sound and smiles at her.

Actually smiles. She finds herself smiling back.

“Lieutenant?” She hears Uncle asks behind her, drawing Zuko’s attention with his surprise, because Uncle likes to ruin nice things for Azula apparently. "What are you doing here?"

“Lieutenant Jee?” He asks, like he’s been punched in the gut.

“Oh, yes, your old ship’s crew is here too.” She says, shooting Iroh an annoyed look (that he does not notice having his back to her) for ruining one of her surprises. “Even the ones who are not… Completely whole anymore.” Azula says the last part a little more quieter, more for the Helmsman’s pride in maintaining appearances over anything else, his leg forever stiffened by injury and the cold of the North. “I thought you might be sentimental over them.” She says, with a shrug, trying to play benevolent but Zuko is already throwing his arms around Lieutenant Jee and full on crying now, under the gaze of his former crew and his new.

Right as always, she commends herself and turns her head gracefully away to allow her brother to put himself back together after his small fit of emotion, wobbly voice asking about their tales since their forceful departure under Zhao’s orders.

“Hawker.” She calls and the man known as Genji comes to her, head bowed and happiness buzzing under his skin. He was from the Wani too, wasn’t he? She will not keep him for long, Azula decides with a smirk. “Send a message to the colonies' outpost.” 

* * *

At the end of the night, when Zuko goes to his room and pretends he hasn’t smiled more that day than he probably has smiled a long time and the _Wani_ 's crew leave the room where they had been allowed out of lenience one by one, and Fusao crosses the doorway under her assuring gaze after many nervous glances to the other royal remaining, Iroh speaks.

“If you mean what you speak, then I will land my aid to this war.” He begins, voice steady like a Fire Sage or a respectable elder’s should be, but the look to his eyes is not the look that resides in kind knowledgeable man’s eyes. “But I must warn you. If you try to hurt Zuko, I will-”

“What?” She interrupts him, because she has no patience for pointless threats. _You do know I could do this alone?_ , she thinks to say, _You do know it would be easier to kill you and do this myself?_ , but that’s her knowledge to have and to not share. Instead, she indulges on putting him back into his place. “What will the Great Dragon of the West do?” Azula scoffs amusedly, but her eyes darken. “You’ve already done the worst you could to me, ‘ _Uncle_ ’. You left me alone with your brother.”

He finally grows silent, mouth set in hard lines and eyes cold, like a General. There it is, the legendary Dragon of The West, all sharp teeth and claws that tore earth kingdom battalions to pieces, a fire breathing blood thirsty man who in his prime had been first in line for the throne her father stole.

How did he have a son like Lu Ten? Kind, gentle, focused on the least loss of lives possible in every battle he walked in, marching alongside foot soldiers? She doesn’t know. Might have been his mother, like their own mother had bred Zuzu with such handicaps. Azula thought he would have regretted letting weakness fester in his son when their cousin had ended crushed by stone outside of the walls of Ba Sing Se, but of course he didn’t. He just regretted sending him to war.

Here he is now, a natural evolution to all that has happened in this family they share, curled around her brother, pretending to be fat and lazy to keep him from war, pretending he can’t see Zuko is not Lu Ten, that for all his kind and gentle heart, he’s also angry and broken and Ozai’s son.

Keeping him from violence will only desensitize him from it. She knows he fights as loosely as a child, all brute force and no technique, no restrain. It’s a given, she shouldn’t throw him to the orcasharks either, push him straight into battle to kill or be killed; instead, she guides him by the hand into treason, has been teaching him how to burn deliberately since they were children by roasting the turtleducks in their pond.

This too will be a war, she gathers, of which of them gets to influence Zuko the most.

“Go find yourself some meaningless distractions, make tea for later or something equally useless.” She opens the door for him like a polite niece would to a very considerate uncle. “I have work to do.”

* * *

The letter she receives is short, predictable and impersonal.

* * *

> _For Her Highness, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation,_
> 
> _His Majesty command Your Highness to let the cowards run, to be stricken down on a more fortunate time. Focus your efforts on capturing the Avatar and slaying him in the name and defense of the glory of our nation._
> 
> _Penned by Eizō, Royal Scribe,_
> 
> _By order of Fire Lord Ozai of the Bloodline of Agni, Sat By His Will Upon The Dragon Throne, Light of The Nation and Keeper of Sozin’s Great Crusade._  
>  _Long May his Flame Burn._

* * *

Azula scoffs. He’s so confident that he has broken her to his whims, sends orders through scribes as if she’s a foot soldier and not his daughter, heir and foil.

He’s not much better than Zuzu, really. Seeing the world as he wants to and not as it is. She painted a pretty picture and now he thinks he’s in perfect control.

_I am not your pawn, Father._

She breathes in and out, strokes her inner flame flawlessly, and lets paper, words and royal seal burn.

* * *

“Where should we go?” Zuko asks, frowning down at the map laid in front of them.

“We will need allies.” Iroh states, every bit the General years of laziness and tea did not mellow in him.

This was not yet a war council. They have no allies firmly established, only the viper-sparrows spread through all corners of the world, who whispered back and bid their time, same as her. This is merely a chat of treason over cups of tea and dinner.

If they chat right, it will eventually be a war council. 

“Mai is in Omashu.” Azula says, which is her way to put in a suggestion.

“Would she support us?” Zuko asks, half thoughtful and half hopeful, like a baby trying to grow sharp teeth.

“Would Ukano support us?” Uncle asks the question that matters.

“He’s weak-willed.” She reassures, nodding with the surety of her knowledge. “He will sway to whichever side seems strongest.”

“We do not look very strong.” Zuko points out through a mumble.

“We will if we lie right.” She says, rolling her eyes slightly at seeing how he lacked the subtleties of warmongering. “Mai will follow us, of that I’m sure, and that will seal his support. Even if he doesn’t lend us his men, he would not willingly divulge our treason when his daughter works in our ranks. He would be under suspicion of treason too. Hardly good for his career.” 

Uncle hums appreciatively, nodding to her words with an approval that means little to her but is still slightly flattering when coming from a military legend, and still doesn’t touch his tea cup.

“Is King Bumi still alive?”

“Yes.” Azula says, arching a brow at him. “Is that insane man worth anything to you?”

Iroh’s eyes darken for a moment, and she and Zuko merely watch an old War Dragon grow claws and fangs again, become deadly under candlelight. He takes a meditative breath in and another out, the fire flickers in response to his inner flame’s will, then gracefully pulls his hands from under his sleeve and places a white lotus tile over the city they’re discussing.

“I think we should go to Omashu.” He says, calmly, too calmly. “Gather your allies and meet mine.”

Many people hate her father, wouldn’t blink an eye if he was to fall, would lend a hand even. Zuko’s allies are already all around the ship, not many but deeply useful, working the engines, steering them through sea, ready to kill or die if asked. There a dozen viper-sparrows all through the world, Mai is in Omashu and she knows Ty Lee’s circus has migrated to somewhere that’s close enough to be a quick stop for one more ally.

Azula’s lip curl at her Uncle for the first time since she was six. He does not smile back.

* * *

> _For His Majesty, Fire Lord Ozai of the Great Nation, Agni’s Will on Earth._
> 
> _I live to follow your commands._
> 
> _The Avatar shall be bound and delivered to you before Sozin’s Comet._
> 
> _Your Faithful Daughter,_
> 
> _Crown Princess Azula of the Bloodline of Agni, Heir to the Dragon Throne, Decedent of Sozin and Fighter to His Crusade, Wielder of the Blue Flame and Youngest Master of the Cold Fire._

* * *

In the morning Princess Azula walks into deck for her morning exercises barely 4 marks past sunrise, alight from the inside out with a self-satisfied glow. She stops by his side, sharp golden eyes drifting towards the horizon.

“Set our course for the closest port to Omashu, Lieutenant.”

Jee does not smile, because senior officers do not smile to Princesses, even when there’s this feeling inflating his chest that makes his not-fully-survival-oriented self want to pat her on the back or walk down the stairs to make sure the boy is still on the rooms reserved for him.

“Of course, Your Highness.” He says instead, which is a much more sensible decision.

* * *


	2. 1.½: Settling Into The New Ship Routine And Mild-To-Severe Father Related Breakdowns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Azula would like to stick to the schedule, Fusao would like that door to be unlocked, the Wani crew are displeased with new shows of favoritism and Zuko is straight up not having that great of a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look,,, look,,,,,  
> So a questionably crack chapter has been borned of overwrting chapter ! and we are in for double updates this month.  
> I have already tripled the number of chapters I initially planned to have, and now I'm adding yet another one because chapter 1 was nearing 20000 words and I have no self control, so I don't have any more ideas of how many chapters this fic si going to have. That number ove there, the 18? Take it as a suggestion. I have no idea what I'm doing.  
> Oh! Quick useless trivia: 1 mark = 15 minutes in STS verse. Okay, now we're ready to go!  
> Enjoy mild angst and crack oplenty!

* * *

𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 1

𝐎𝐧 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐓𝐨 𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐇𝐞'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

* * *

Azula is nothing if not orderly.

And precise.

And a brush away from perfection.

This harmonious and hard-earned seamless combination of the three has not been born only from natural talent, even though she’s a prodigy and the best bender born on Agni’s line in five generations, but from the fact she has sharpened herself routinely into flawlessness through a strict daily schedule that she sticks to as much as circumstances allow (the ship has not been kind to her skincare routine, but she does use her firelily facial lotion at least twice a day if only out of pride), aiming always to either crush circumstances under her boot for daring to stand in her way or make circumstances her and molding a new schedule around them.

As of the last four days, circumstances have come to be having Zuko and Iroh aboard both of the physical ship and the whole take-down Ozai and send him off with a fiery death metaphorical one. Family admittedly do change things. Once she managed to stop going to sleep holding back a grin, because she’s not a child to sleep smiling because her brother gave her scraps of attention and a friendly conversation and seven whole smiles one small chuckle and that might have been an attempt of a hug she wasn’t going to return but would have been nice, Azula reshapes her schedule into one fitting of the situation they’re in.

This is what she’s been working with for a week and a half now:

  * **06:00** to **07:00** \- Meditation, apparently. (Though she’s losing a hour of restorative sleep because of Uncle and his balance talk, so he’s not helping his case in any way).
  * **07:00** to **9:00** \- Breakfast.
  * **09:00** to **11:30** \- Morning Training (Yes, 3 hours and a half, stop complaining, Zuzu).
  * **11:30** to **12:00** \- Light discussion of treason with Zuko and Uncle while waiting for lunch.
  * **12:00** to **13:30** \- Mild discussion of treason over lunch.
  * **13:30** to **14:00** \- Heavy discussion of treason over tea.
  * **14:00** to **16:00** \- Afternoon Training. (Yes, Another training, Zuzu, she doesn't care, stop being bloody lazy).
  * **17:00** to **18:00** \- Handling treasonous mail.
  * **18:00** to **19:00** \- Handling non-treasonous mail.
  * **19:00** to **20:00** \- Some more discussion over treason but with Colonel Fusao.
  * **20:00** to **21:00** \- Dinner (talks about how was their day and not treason, even though they all knew how their day was, this was a ship, and they did not fully know how to work through their treason but Uncle _insisted_ on at least one session of small talk per day).
  * **21:00** to **21:30** \- Mild passive-aggressive confrontations with Uncle.
  * **21:30** to **05:00** \- Restorative Sleep.



Generally, Azula enjoyed most of her schedule. The coup is beginning to come along nicely, the colonies’ outposts send letters regularly of their support and with the right prodding she might get at least 6 more Admirals and Commanders to abandon their neutrality and take up on arms on her name. While Father creates increasingly stupider titles for the time he will rule over the known world supreme (what was the last one? Supreme Phoenix Emperor? Phoenix High King? She had been dozing off internally at the time, entertaining much grander thoughts. It had ‘phoenix’ and a royal title in there and it was stupid and that was all Azula really needed to know) or got distracted with whatever it was the child Avatar had done the last week, she spent her time setting up his downfall and whipping her brother in a proper treasonous shape.

“Zuzu, not that it's past me to mock you to exalt my skills.” She says, stretching her arms over her head, then her whole body from one side to the other, muscles protesting slightly with tension but she was the master of muscles, not the other way around. “But take this as gentle encouragement: are you really sticking to the basic forms because you're embarrassed I'll knock you on your ass when you use them?”

“I'm not!” He says, blowing fire through his mouth like a complaining toddler who just happened to know one of the most dangerous firebending techniques in the world.

“Then, do please use them.” She says, hands on her waist. “We're sparring, not having a play date.”

“I can't.”

“Whyever not?” Azula asks, not willing to encourage nonsense. He scowls and looks down, letting out muffled words she cannot understand, like a seven year old would but instead it's her older brother. “The royal person does not mumble, brother.”

“I don't know how!” Zuko roars at her, like a winged snakesalamander pretending he's a dragon, his hands bursting in flame daggers that are as unimpressive as they're impulsive, and Azula suffers through it with an apathetic disposition. “Uncle never taught me any of the advanced forms. He said I was not ready.”

Azula blinks a couple of moments, then tilts her head at him because he must only be saying something stupid, the silly brother she has.

"Excuse me, what?"

"He said I was not ready."

She laughs, cold and sharp but also bright and delighted, because yeah, that’s something that would happen to Zuko on the palace under the oxasses instructors they shared during childhood, but not with Uncle. Uncle adored Zuzu, he would not sabotage him to punish him for his shortcomings, repeating over and over simple exercises instead of taking the next step so he would grow angrier and angrier and his bending got sloppier and sloppier for it, which would just be more reason to hold him back and condemn him to a life of never even coming close to catching up with his baby sister.

He must be kidding. So funny, Zuzu and his jokes and his pouting and crossing his arms and sulking like he was really upset. Even… Even though Zuko doesn’t really do the joking thing often, if at all, he must be kidding. He must be, right?

Oh, for the love of _Agni—_

She turns to glare the I-demand-answers glare at the vague direction the Wani crew was hoarded above them, cheerfully watching someone finally wipe the floor with their prince after all the times he had teenage-angst-blasted them from the side of his ship during morning spars more than thrice, but were now looking anywhere but at her.

Fire and ash, he was not kidding.

_Three years on the basics?_

It was not in the best interest of this little coup of theirs, who needed unity and support and could achieve so through a family uniting against a man who was a monster and with a legendary general to wave around, to murder her Uncle. Also, Zuko would probably be very cross with her if she were to find Iroh right now and shoot him with cold fire, even if that would lessen her headache and leave her feeling vindicated.

Three years on basic forms.

Like a baby.

Unbelievable.

She understands Zuko's constant anger a bit now. Azula would feel like screaming too, feels like screaming right now.

“Congratulations, brother. You're graduating to advanced forms.” She announces, every bit as exasperated as she is well into her rights to be. “Root that disgraceful stance of yours."

* * *

Zuko's days pass in a blur of conflicting thoughts and confusing feelings, with equal amounts of near-fratricidal training with his (well-meaning?) sister and heavy intakes of the calming tea Uncle keeps shoving at him. There’s also the compulsive learning of the name and story of every 41st soldier in the ship and the occasional situation of being mildly assaulted by the Wani crew but out of a place of care. The only moments he was truly able to think were the ones before he fell asleep, which were bad moments because they lead to nightmares and nightmares led to Father and Father was who he was having conflicting thoughts and confusing feelings about to begin with.

It doesn't help that the bed back in his room, luxurious in decoration and in everything else and so unlike his standard room on his decayed ship or the supply closet in Zhao's ship where he had slept between sacks of rice and various vegetables, is too soft and comfortable and he can't sleep on it. 

He should be able to.

He _is_ a Prince, even if a banished one.

Not even a banished one, if Azula is really being honest and won't just kill him one of these days during training when he's the most at ease around her; or after they have killed Father and before she kills Uncle, to assure she's the one with the claim to the throne. That would be classical Azula, playing the long and meticulously calculated plan.

( It's not like anyone would appoint Zuko to be Fire Lord when his sister is right there. Sure, it's his birthright, but if it came down to it and they had to solve the matter with a Agni Kai, Zuko knows that he would lose against her just as surely as water is wet, earthbenders are dense as their elements and the Avatar is insufferable. )

Yet, the question rings around his head, like a suggestion or a bird’s incessant chirping: _is Azula being honest?_ He’s been a bigger fool before, trusting and going along with any good scenario his sister presented him, but nothing about this feels like a powerplay or a manipulation scheme, but it’s wise to mistrust, he learned. Especially with family.

He must be awfully sleep deprived if this is where all the nightmares and wonderings led him.

“Come in, Fusao.” His sister's voice greets, pleasantly. “You're three marks early, it's still 17:45, but I will grant you praise for the eagerness. Where were we with yesterday's discussion— oh.” She says, not surprised because Azula doesn’t do surprise, but still with that curious-cautious way of hers. His sister blinks once more than acknowledges him. “Zuko.” The slight tilt of her head, as if she’s a racoon-cat and he, a tiny squirrel-rat made prey. “You’re seventeen marks early. Dinner isn’t until 20.”

“Hey.” He says, as awkward and unsure as she accuses him of being at least thrice before breakfast. “I know, I- I just wanted to… Talk, I guess?”

The usual backed off body posture she takes on while handling something unexpected does not wear off however as if it’s an exotic animal she’s not sure either to try and tame into a war pet or just outright kill, so Zuko (who has a lifetime of experience on not-dying) doesn't dare to move until she has made up her mind. Fortunately for him, her sister lowers her mail.

Is that the treasonous or the non-treasonous kind? He’s not sure, he never could tell those two apart no matter how many times she explained it to him. It would be better for him if it was color coded, but also very distinctively not treason-functional if color coded. Either way, it’s two hours of mail and that seems hellishy, and Azula already destroys his body, mind and soul enough with two separate daily trainings for him to want to pick up the ropes of opposing loyalty mails.

Fortunately for him, Azula body does the thing where it relaxes three millimeters and she puts her letters down, offering him a raised brow. She has decided to tame him into a war pet then. Better than dying, he guesses, and she does mean well.

(He thinks.)

“It must be pretty serious, if you don’t want to do it over dinner with Uncle.” She says, and puts him in as much at ease as he can feel knowing the intent that brought him into her office out of his own will, sighing miserably as she pushes away the last letter she had been analysing, leaning back onto her chair and flickering her eyes to the chair on the other side of the table, as if expecting someone to pop into existence in it. “Then again, his small talk is pretty useless. _Honestly_ , if you plan on staying on the door forever, give up being a prince and become a guard. Take a seat already, you’re aggravating me.”

He does as he’s told, repeating two assumptions and one doubt in his mind on rewind, until her eyes are on him and the mail is being neglected and Azula squares her shoulders in the ‘well?’ gesture that issues an invitation to get on with it and not waste more of her time. Zuko takes one calming breath, strokes his inner flame like Uncle tries to teach him so very often until he feels something that resembles calm.

“We have to talk about Father.”

“Oh?” She asks, pleasantly amused but also begrudgingly impressed. “Aren’t you a spring of surprises today? Very well, what must we talk about Father?”

There are two certainties forming and one festering doubt.

One.

“He tried to kill me.”

“Yes.” She says, as if that is a given. It clearly was in Azula’s world, where she had plucked the wool from her own eyes and kept them sharp and open. “More than once too.”

Two.

“He sent you to kill me.”

“Officially he sent me to capture you. But it is generally frowned upon to issue a royal official order for your daughter to murder your son.”

And the doubt:

“He wouldn’t have killed you.”

“As long as I remained under his thumb, probably not.” She admits, but her posture is still sharp around the edges, there is no lighthearted antics to what she says. Instead, she arches her chin, imperiously, but without showing any vulnerable skin on her neck. “But we both know what being under Father's thumb is like.”

“You know it better than me.” Zuko says, like an accusation or condolences.

Her eyes flash with something as deadly as lightning. Azula is smiling, but all teeth and sharp canines. There’s a bitter hurt to the air he can taste and be sickened by the taste.

“I guess I am just that lucky.”

Something hot and gross surges up his throat that tastes like half-digested lunch, and Zuko swallows it down, allowing himself to be unsettled thoroughly by the way things have gone, because he doesn’t have the control his sister has. He never had.

“Why are you doing this, Azula?” And isn’t that the golden ticket question, the one no one has answered, not even Azula herself. She doesn’t look particularly willing to do it either, but Zuko presses, because everything else is shifting under his feet, he needs certainty. He needs to step on ground and know it won’t crack, he needs to walk out this ship with her and head to Omashu and know she won’t strike him in the back. “You could… You could wait until he died and be free if his thumb and be a… A prodigy Fire Lady and damn me and Uncle to die just the same, so why?”

“You’re assuming I’d survive being under his thumb, Zuzu.” Azula says, voice amused and gaze glassy.

She has a point. Azula is a prodigy, always was, always has bee; she was smarter and more cunning and way better at bending to fit the molds Ozai set for them, but Zuko is not blind: his sister was missing corners she hadn’t been three years ago. She has been missing bits and pieces, like a poorly handed teacup, chipping at the edges and cracking every time more pressure was added to it, every time she was thrown against impossible tasks and survived it at the expense of her own self. Sometimes, she looks at empty corners like they’re haunted, and grows quiet when she looks back at the company she’s keeping.

She’s not whole: she’s bits and pieces, broken and torn and glued and stitched together, but in all the wrong ways, even if she makes it work, seamless and steady and deadly with all those sharp edges.

Sometimes, she smiles in the way Ozai would when he got things this way. Sometimes, she flipped strands of her hair back with the same grace as Ursa. Sometimes, she looked at him when she held back laughs, and she looked as mischievous and playful as the small five year old he made sand castles with on Ember Island.

He doesn’t tell her what father did to him, he doesn’t need to. She doesn’t repay the favour, not even when he gives her openings, gives her silent chances. He’s not sure if she wants to know either. 

“He’s a terrible person.” Zuko says, trying the statement on his lips, tasting truth and the salt of a child’s held back tears on his tongue as he says it. “He hurt us for his entire life. He- he killed Mom, he tried to kill me.” He frowns then, his eyes move to the expensive wood of her work table, the muscle of his heart does a strange clenching thing that is less hurt than it is breaking, rapturing. Something storms pass the tearing pieces of his heart, his face twisting with an enraged sourness. “He’d have ended up killing you.”

“He killed Lu Ten and grandfather too.” She adds, breezy like an afterthought. Shrugs too. “Though, the last wasn’t much missed…”

Which, was true, but wasn’t the part that left him as winded as the day one of the komodo-rhinos were particularly fussy and Zuko wasn’t as tender as he should have been when helping Genji with the saddles and a very heavy head slammed against his chest and bruised a couple of ribs and he couldn’t breathe right for weeks, but he thought he would never breathe again, laid back first on the steel floor.

“He killed Lu Ten?” He asks, in the same throaty whisper he had let out ‘call Satomi’ to a freaking out Genji, shouting at the four winds.

Azula looks at him with the strange form of pity she’s capable of showing, not unlike the one she would fix small turtleducklings, the ones born weak and frail and likely to die if not aided, as she watched dispassionately them wither and die, without ever twitching her hand to aid them.

If she’s going to let him drown, like she did so many unlucky ones, now is the time.

Instead, she parts her lips, voice honeyed and words a cutting blade:

“You think a Prince of the Fire Nation, undefeated in combat, under the command of the Crown Prince, a legend among military ranks, gets killed by random earthbenders outside walls he brought down?”

How can she be so casual about it? Zuko would feel like throwing up if he had any presence of mind to feel ill. Something is crawling up his throat, tying knots there through which he couldn’t swallow and couldn’t breathe and this is his family, broken and twisted, and falling apart in broken rotten pieces under his bleeding fingertips.

“He killed him.” He says, hollow and almost wobbling.

“I never asked and he never denied.” She offers, pouting in the ‘it’s all the same for me’ way that infuriated him since he was a child, but he’s fresh from arctic water numb. 

“He’s an awful man.” 

Azula’s eyes sharpen grimly, her face darkens and smoothens, she stares into his eyes and merely says:

“Yes.”

“He has to die.” He says, because it’s the rational thing to say, and something is burning in his gut, but he secretly wishes his sister would say anything but:

“Yes.”

“We have to kill him.” This time the words sink, into his brain and into his chest, and it’s like someone poured alcohol on the tiny flame at the bottom of his being, and Zuko has an inferno in his ribcage to manage all the sudden as he says, somber as anything. “We have to kill him, or he will end up killing us.”

“Yes.”

Zuko feels a distinct anger rise in him, an anger that courses through his veins and infiltrates the tissue of his memories and rip them apart like soldiers do to treasonous material found in hidden away bunkers of traitors to the motherland and it’s cause, but wasn’t Zuko made of treasonous material right now? Treasonous thoughts and treasonous actions, in a treasonous ship with treasonous soldiers of a treasonous battalion, a treasonous sister and a treasonous Uncle and treasonous feelings inside him that were supposed to be anger, but burn in a different, entirely unpleasant manner.

He holds his breath, like the dragons of old, tries to hold the burning and the screaming inside him, but he never manages, he never manages. It all ferments inside of him, like spiced wine or poison or something worse. Azula’s eyebrows twitch to frame the confused expression that colors her face as Zuko stands up, breathing heavy and eyes stinging, knocking the chair back while doing so. His shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall, his chest doesn’t fill enough with air because it has a scream and the smell of burning flesh and burning hair and he feels like wine or poison or a bomb.

Zuko opens his mouth to let out a scream; he sobs instead.

* * *

This was not in the schedule. Zuko was on her office, bawling his eyes out, and Azula did not know how and did not want to deal with that. She puts down her pen very very slowly, afraid that one stray movement might get him to sob even harder, and thinks this is just like the turtleduck fit all over again. Yet, Azula thinks, she didn’t kill any turtleducks today.

There aren’t even any turtleducks in burning range in this ship, or this side of the continent, so she’s not quite sure what he is crying about, she’s only sure she doesn’t like it and is very much unwilling to deal with it. He sobs a little louder and Azula pointedly doesn’t flinch away from the sound.  
It makes no sense. What is he crying about? He was talking about dad just a moment before, it was a nice moment, almost had some bonding over how terrible of a father Ozai was, and when she was sure they were about to plot his murder in explicit detail (she had indulged in at least 6 death scenarios, she liked to think of them before sleeping and had the best of dreams, where she was dressed as Fire Lady and drinking sake in the halls as her father’s body burned through the afternoon) then he started crying.

Which, in all truthfulness, was terribly unsatisfying.

Still, surely this fit is due to something completely unrelated to her person and completely related to their father who should not be named?

( She adds a seventh death scenario to her mind, where she and Zuko drink sake and dance as the worst man to ever disgrace Agni’s royal line burns and Uncle frowns only half-disapproving; It’s a nice one, one she hopes will come to pass and that settles some of her very much on edge nerves even as Zuko’s shoulders shake from crying, then draws a deep breath and some resolve to her chest. )

"I'll be right back." She says calmly, but she's already on her feet and already out of the door and wondering what exactly is Uncle's schedule and in which corner of the ship he's drinking tea at this time of the day.

She’s not fleeing, she’s just unequipped and unwilling to deal with this, and she knows when to admit she’s not the best suited woman for the job. Loathe it as she might, Azula knows Iroh is not only more prepared and willing and experienced at Zuko’s breakdowns, so she will find him and request/demand his assistance this once, then threaten Zuko when he’s recovered into never doing this again without previous and proper warning to her less he wants to earn her wrath in ways he hasn't before.

That's when she bumps face first against Colonel Fusao's chest.

“Your Highness!" He says, and holds her by the shoulders so she doesn't fall— a total crossing of lines, really, because she clearly wasn't going to fall and he is just a Colonel — before he widens his eyes in horror and lets go of her right about the time she grabs a hold of him. “Are you alright?"

An idea strikes her, like lightning, but considerably less lethal. Her nails dig into the hollows in-between his armor plates, deep into his skin. 

“Do you know how to handle people crying?” She demands of him, voice hard and imperative, eyes demanding and just this side of hysterical.

“What?” Fusao asks, eyes widening before his brows furrow and he seems as lost as a snow foxseal thrown in the middle of land.

“This is important, Colonel!” Azula says, and shakes him by the shoulders once, violently. It's all she needs for the sharpened awareness of war to shoot adrenaline through him. “Have you any experience with emotional teenagers crying?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” He replies, like a soldier answers to their superior officer. Confusion twitches his brow, and he's about to cross another line, out of the ill advised care he has for her. Foolish little man, but her brother is foolish too. They should get along. “Uh, yes I do. Why—?” He starts asking, but she already opened the door to her office again and is pushing him in there with Zuko.

“Do your job.” She says and closes the door behind his back, as he turns from her sobbing brother (arms wrapped around his knees, knees pulled against his chest) to stare at her with wild eyes.

Crisis averted.

Mostly.

Now that she is locked out of her office, though, she might have to work around her schedule. Rearrange the slot of time for letters-handling.

Azula sighs, brushing her bangs away from her face, and turning sharply from her ofice's door, marching away in deliberate ease.

Family truly is an inconvenience.

She makes a small note of filling that stupid pond with a stupid amount of turtleducks when they claim back the palace. Maybe it will keep Zuko emotionally stable.

Her too, while at it, and her office not-invaded.

* * *

When Princess Azula locks him in the room, it is because she is assured he has some experience in handling emotional teenagers crying. That was a correct assumption.

What Princess Azula did not take in consideration when locking him into her office with her brother is that he had no experience in handling emotional royal teenagers crying. And not just crying either, Prince Zuko was having a complete meltdown, and if Fusao didn’t know he was locked for the time being, he would have ran out to get Prince Iroh or one of the disrespectful crew, because then he would be able to blame it on them if things didn't work out.

It was a lovely thought. Unfortunately, a thought is a thought, and in reality, Prince Zuko is shivering and sobbing and crying and barely breathing while at it and Colonel Fusao screams inside as he kneels by the crumpled mess of a 16 year old’s side and tentatively goes:

“Your Highness?”

Prince Zuko makes a long sound that sounds vaguely like a dying animal and boundaries are thrown to the back burner as Fusao places a hand on the royal person’s shoulders to keep him upright, worry pumping blood near his ears, loud as all hell.

“Leave-” Zuko chokes out through sobs. “Leave m-me alone.”

Not a chance in hell, Fusao knows, though a knee jerk response, is not the appropriate answer when speaking with a prince and possible future Fire Lord. Still, he wishes he could say it, because it has more impact than the meek and pathetic little:

“I cannot, Sir. Your sister locked us in here” that he lets out.

He is rewarded with a long line of profanities that showcases various expanse of curses a teenager collects when sent to the sea with weathered sailors at thirteen, and is very much surprised to know it has surpassed Fusao’s worst curses by miles even when spoken so half-heartedly. Maybe the navy does have a dirtier mouth than the military; it's sad to admit loss a centuries long dispute.

“— Agni-damned Azula.” Prince Zuko says, finally, ending on a lighter note.

“I'm not sure a member of the royal family can be Agni-damned, Your Highness.” He tries again, this time with the dry humor that usually works out a chuckle or two from a fellow crewmember or two.

It does more than earth a chuckle from Prince Zuko; It earns him the question:

“Not ever my Father?” In this deranged, bitter tone. He doesn't answer, because the answer is obvious, and maybe there are more Agni damned members of the royal family if he stops to análise their lineage, but not his prince and princess. One of them, however, doesn't see it that way, letting his head back into a fit of maniacal laughter that slowly broke down into compulsive sobbing. “I don't understand.” Prince Zuko says, repeating himself over and over again while shaking his head. “I don't understand, I was just a kid. I was just a kid. I tried so hard to make him proud, I did, I tried, I don't— Why… Why couldn't he love us? Just a little?”

“Sir?” Fusao asks, lost and unsure of what to do, squeezing him for comfort and breaking more protocols, but the boy doesn't budge.

“I'm not asking too much, am I?” He asks, his young face contorted with a raw pain that hurts too look at and confusion, tears and scars and twisted lines that do not belong on a 16 year old's face making him almost grotesque to look at. Fusao feels like he's intruding in a moment he should not be here to see. “I'm not being ungrateful or unruly or disrespectful, I'm— He must have loved me at some point, right? He… He played with me when I was a kid, he helped me walk. When I was four and we went to Ember Island I— I could have drowned, but he pulled me out of the water. Why would he pull me out of the water if he didn't love me? Why would he save me from death to k—” A loud sob cuts through his words and shakes his body in a violent spasm, the tears flow anew again. “I didn't do anything wrong. I was just a child. I tried everything, I did everything I could, so why couldn't he love me? I was just a child, how could he try to—”

Prince Zuko's chin rests on his chest and his arms wrap around his frame, either to provide himself comfort or protection, the Colonel is not sure. He is sure that he shakes, with sobs and tears and the dying animal noises he lets out, like the wounded sableserow he and Anka had walked into the forest to find when they were 8 and 7— wounded past any chance of survival, wailing for the mercy of a quick kill.

This is what Fusao knows of how his life was spared: a boy entered a war meeting he was not invited to with his Uncle's aid. An Admiral spoke of slaughter, the boy spoke out of turn and on behalf of their whole division's life's. He was held to his disrespect, under Agni's light, had turned to fight a man who spoke of senseless killings and met one with a different face. The boy burned.

That, however, was not enough to save his life, Fusao knows, that's only the story of how a prince got banished and what a kind heart earns you at court. It's half a dao, one side of the coin.

Fusao's survival depended on kindness, shrewdness and the bravery to act.

So a boy had been brave to speak out with kindness, and burned for it, that much was known to every Fire Nation citizen worth their inner flame. That a girl had laughed as her brother burned but not left the room until she saw their uncle was holding him and a healer was on their way was a more hidden story. She had been brave to act and shrewd in how to, gathering faces and names of those who had not smiled at such a brutal display, and as the oldest of the royal children was shipped off their port face half-burned, she spoke with those who had turned away from a child's scream about a battalion of young recruits who would suffer the same, that a Prince had been willing to burn to defend.

His life was cradled by two hands, a Prince's and a Princess', and turned away from certain death to a somewhat uncertain survival.

He was very aware of that when he hugged Fire Prince Zuko's sobbing form as if he was merely hugging Anka in their tent as his sister lay heaving dying breaths, ‘I am scared, Fu', as if Zuko was only a child who had seen cruelty too soon and never been told how to handle it like the rest of the 41st and the children on this world were, be them Fire Nation or not.

He hugged him like he would a recruit who had just seen a friend slaughtered, or issued their first kill, who was merely scared or horrified or angry or powerless, and let the boy prince weep a wet pool on the undershirt of his armour for loving a Father that had aimed to kill him on his knees when he was thirteen but had saved him from waves when he was four.

* * *

The next day, Zuko worked thrice as hard at Morning Training and progressed agreeably. Azula, always one to reward good behavior, reserved the time of 16:00 to 16:30 as the slot to potentially deal with any other existential crisis due to Father's love (or due to anything really) her brother might have.

If Fusao looks slightly anxious every time her brother walks in the same room as him but ultimately sticks closer to the table than he normally would have and Zuko never quite meets his eyes but relaxes his shoulders at the proximity, Azula doesn't speak on it.

( That does not mean the Wani's crew extends both of them the same courtesy. )

* * *

“How ungrateful children become.” Hanako says mournfully over a glass of spiced wine, shaking her head silently.

“And so quickly too.” Teruko agreed, pointing a finger at her crewmate as she raised her own glass in a toast to the… Ungrateful quickness of children, who knows? Not their Crown Prince, that’s for sure.

The Crewman was clearly just having too much fun egging the whole thing on to care either, as was the rest of the crew, if Dekku turning his face to snicker against his husband’s shoulder and how Genji eyes crinkle with a repressed smile even more as he does so, amusement etched in every line of every posture of the relaxed bunch sat crowded around the very exasperated 16-year-old heir to the throne is anything to go by.

“What are you talking about this time?” Zuko asks in a long-suffering tone that is not anywhere near his forner only-shouting manner of communication, but allowing arms to be wrapped around his shoulders and to be pulled against one of the crew or another, a clear sign that he had abandoned his hopes of not being harassed by them as well as a gentle hint that he was secretly very glad they were still here to harass him.

“You and Fusao!” The first says, not unlike the way a wife would accuse a husband of cheating, which does draw up several brows towards their respective hairlines. “Always sticking around each other! And Princess Azula too!”

“Why does she get to have you use her proper title and I'm 'brat'?!”

“Shut up, brat.” Hanako says, waving a hand in his direction dismissively. IN a corner, a young woman takes an offended intake of air before being swiftly interrupted on her tracks toward the table and towards the Engineer’s neck by a placating wave from Azula’s hand. “Soon you will like his crew more than ours!”

“It's not very difficult.” Zuko mutters, slapping Tanako‘s hands away and glaring at her unrepentant face with the rage of a thousand suns as offended gasps sounded around his frame, like a bunch of annoying ratpingeons. “ Their crew respects me, at the very least.”

A thunderous boust of exclamations took over the table and drew many curious 41st eyes to look at them, crowding around the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation as if he was a mere teenager, pointing fingers at His Highness and screaming a vast variation of ' _how dare you_ 's. Well, some, at least. Lieutenant Jee and Kazuto did put a valiant effort to keep order and decorum going, the last being significantly more unsuccessful than the first. It was easy to say there were many horrified 41st soldiers clutching their metaphorical pearls, but the keenest amidst them could see the way their prince's lips were almost curled in a smug smirk, how his face softened with reluctant fondness and his eyes sparkled gently with a quiet amber-like happiness.

“You can replace us all you want, brat.” Shouted a self-righteously furious Hanako. “But Jee is still your dad!”

In two different corners of the dining room, two royals spit out their wine. Azula’s nostrils burned with the spices and the kiwigrape, but her chest shook quietly with horrified laughter as she was crowded by 41st soldiers, worried over her, guiding her out of the hall. Iroh looked in equal portions shocked, pleased and crossed with the fact he had stained his sleeves with the wine.

Neither of them are noticed in the small world of the Wani’s crew.

Both Jee and Zuko looked equally distressed as they moved to deny the statement.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of Book 1, Chapter 1/2!  
> Chapter 1(the one that doesn't have 20000 words because I'm not crazy and have self control eerybody shut up) will be up on the 31st, because it will be my little sister's birthday and I like spooky scary skeletons and witches as a bissexual wiccan.  
> So thank you all for reading and I'll se you next week!


	3. 1.1: Omashu (And The Truly Ridiculous Events That Lead Them There) (Not That It Gets Any Better)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one that includes such treasonous events as: the scheduling of a date under the strangest of circumstances, the shipwide bullying of Pikesman Kazuto, various Guard Zuko shenanigans, the self-poisoning of the Dragon of the West, a very exasperated Fusao and his beloved mongoose lizard Long Snout, Azula being forced into having moral standards after an oopsie, the recruiting of childhood friends and the arrival at Omashu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A dumbass accidentally posted the chapter she was starting to format on the 26th. I am dumbass.
> 
> So I am very sorry about that and for the people that read the half a chapter and commented, it was an accident but I'm glad you enjoyed the butchered mess that was the chapter? Hahahahah.
> 
> But, as promised, here's the full (and unfortunately not-right-dated again due to the fact that my life has spirraled beyond my control and I will not be at home for over half the day tomorrow) chapter!

They port in a nowhere Earth Kingdom town under the control of a fairly unimportant military officer, where the people scurry at the sight of a royal sloop as all people with good sense should. Azula taps her fingers thoughtfully against steel as she gazed at the green horizon the expanse of land shows her. Stopping for Ty Lee will be a bit of a long detour, but there's no rush to get to Mai. Her father is not leaving the city he was appointed to anytime soon so neither is his perfect daughter.

Zuko and Iroh are under the deck (for it would not bode well for word to get to Father dearest that the two traitors that had allegedly escaped her grasp were actually sunbathing on her ship), on the royal rooms, being babysat by a couple of Fusao's most trusted officers, Himari and Itsuki. Both of which, in all truthfulness, were way more at ease around their superior officer than foot soldiers should, but given that she now knew what chaotic unruliness was like from Lieutenant Jee's crew and gray hairs, she would let it slide.

Himari had made no secret of adoring her brother, so her subtle affectionate nature should be confusing him for at least 2 to 3 more marks, and Itsuki was a friendly man who indulged in tea, which should keep Iroh busy for long enough for Azula to think of an excuse not no take him with her under no circumstances, because he would be a pain to deal with and try to run his own plan parallel to hers and ruin all their plans as a result.

Fusao moved to her side, bowing as required by protocol, until he assumed his spot as her faithful shadow, ready to either heed commands or give a shrewd input if asked to; she waited a moment longer, until the boy with the haunted eyes from Zuko’s crew was away from earshot entirely (she trusted most of the Wani’s former crew members with most things, but not to weaselrat her plans to Uncle, who had been co-commanding them with Zuko for three years while she only had two months of dalliances with them, was not one of them - especially Kazuto, the easily scared thing he was, always so eager to avoid conflict, his hands shaking whenever he grabbed a weapon).

Patience is a valuable skill in times of war. She waits until the deck is but her, Fusao and the sound of waves. There’s no rush, either to walk out the ship or to kill her father. Being still was what earned the badgerviper her bite.

“I will make a small detour on our way to Omashu.” She informs him, her tone not open to discussion, merely a polite warning. “Do see that we’re packed with essentials for two extra days.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“I do not think the mongoose lizards should be necessary.” Azula continues, weighing scales and calculating different moves and lengths of journey, precision taking priority over all feelings but one: “Though I do not feel like walking like a peasant.”

“I will have the mongoose lizards on the ready.”

“Good.” She says, which is as close as ‘thank you’ as any member of the royal family should go to, not that Zuko got the memo, being brainwashed by Mom and Iroh as he’s been. Poor Dum Dum, 16 years and not one sharp edge to speak of. Though that train of thought induces her to heave a sigh. “I suppose you have not thought of any better ideas to leave my dear Uncle behind than I did.”

“None that wouldn’t make him suspicious.” He says, apologetically, and she counts to ten inside of throwing a fit, because she’s not a child and not her brother.

"I wish I could just kill him.” She says, for either the one hundred and fourth time or the one hundred and fifth.

It would fix so many problems. Many would argue that it’s more advantageous to keep him alive than kill him, but she would disagree. Is he were to kill him and deliver his corpse to Father, it would strengthen his belief that she’s loyal to him, then it would all be a matter of pretend to be chasing Zuko’s trail and give him one more reason to never suspect her and playing Iroh up as a martyr to whichever crazy allies he had to boast off and gather their support. Then all would be wonderful! She would have dinner with Zuko without having to speak about how her day was, work on reversing her deep hatred of tea, get one more hour of sleep back without his stupid meditation and have a great time overall. Why can’t Zuko see the advantages of strategic fratricide?

“You have requested of me to remind your Highness that it would be counterproductive to do so every time you expressed your want to murder him out loud.”

“I know.” She complains gently, gripping the side of the ship as if to strangle an iron neck.

Damn it all to Koh.

“So should I have a lizard ready for Prince Iroh?”

“The slowest and laziest we have.” She seethes out. “If we lose him in the way there Zuko can hardly blame us for that.”

“I will see to it, Your Highness.”

Her eyes flicker to the Wani man who’s trying for the third or fourth time to come up the deck and do whatever task he was assigned, only to cower under her golden cold gaze and Fusao’s impassive demeanor and go back down the stairs once again. If she didn’t know her Colonel better, she’d accuse that huffed sound of being a laugh (she wouldn’t mind if it was either, she was pretty amused at the poor man’s antics).

The idea that followed was born of that amusement and of the fact Azula is as brilliant as she is great. Her shadow moves to leave, with a tilt of his head and a shape of the flame around his hands, and she will let him but first:

“And Fusao?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“See to it that Pikesman Kazuto has civilian clothes to wear.” She says evenly, devious little plans rolling about her mind as she gazes back to the green horizon, all land ready to be conquered. “I’ll be taking his armor.”

* * *

Kazuto likes to make himself scarce. It’s not a matter of shyness, it’s a matter of self-preservation.

The ship is too big and the mess they’re in is too grand and the gory violence they’ll be thrown in the middle of hangs above them like a sword over a neck, the sight of a blood red horizon.

He was not an idiot, he was surrounded by a battalion who survived every massacre they were shoved towards through sheer ferocity and desperation alone. He knew he was seasoned at the mundane violence war brew, infinitely lesser than what they had faced, but it was violence either way; Kazuto knew what the sound of a gutted man was like, what cutting another’s throat was like, knew how a body sounded when hitting the floor, had heard more than one set of footsteps over the deck when he was hidden in a metal corner of the ship ( a hand over his mouth, breathing as quietly as panic would allow. _Is he dead? Are they gone? Were they going to kill him too?_ ), had seen what righteous fury looked like in blue eyes in Water Tribe colors.

He knew what death smelt like, he knew how hard it was to wash blood from under one’s fingernails.

He would never face that again if he had a choice, but no one had that choice since Sozin decimated the Air Nomads, did they?

Kazuto counted himself lucky, despite everything, under such circumstances. He had the crew he had bonded with, that crowded around him and babied him in the least noticeable ways to people who weren’t looking. He had not died a frozen death outside the Northern Water Tribe icy walls. He was going into a war where he would only face golden eyes and not blue ones. He was risking death for Prince Zuko, who he knew fairly well and was loud and grumpy but loyal and was as fond as the rest of the ragtag crew as they were of him, and Princess Azula, who he didn’t know as well but despite the mean jokes turned a blind eye whenever he would hesitate holding a weapon and had him do tasks that were as far away from combat as possible, and that was better than almost dying for Fire Lord Ozai.

If it all ended up with him dying, then at least he was going in an exciting context, even if all he did was mop floors and not meet the Colonel’s eyes.

He startles when two knocks come from his door, scrambling to his feet from the bunk bed. Who even knocks in here? This is the collective dorm, seven to eight people sleep here, if it was any of the Wani’s crew returning to their room they surely wouldn’t bother to knock and he's not royalty to be afforded that gesture. He straightens his back and bottles his confusion.

“Yes?” He says, and thinks that’s a good enough answer given how unexpected the whole situation was.

“Pikesman Kazuto?” The door creaks open with a gentle push, revealing Colonel Fusao on the other side, bathed by light and inherently comfortable with all of himself and the environment he was in too. That ease is immediately counterbalanced by a ruffling of all of Kazuto’s nerves as the black haired man with the sun kissed skin arches a brow in an innocent query that doesn’t match his amused golden gaze. “I am not interrupting anything, I take it?”

“Uh.” He shouldn’t sound stupid in front of Princess Azula’s second in command, not even when he looks as good as he should not be allowed to; he clears his throat and tries again. “No, sir.”

“That’s good.” Fusao says, with a thoughtful nod of his head before taking a deliberately slow step to cross the doorway, half-closing the door behind him. “Do you have civilian clothes?”

Kazuto blinks, then:

“What?”

“Do you have civilian clothes to wear around?”

“Like, on the port?” He asks, cautiously, frowning at the other man that merely shrugs, a smile playing in his lips.

“If needed.”

That doesn’t make any sense. They are anchored in a friendly port (or as friendly as these they get), surely they wouldn’t have any problems with Fire Nation soldiers walking about dressed as Fire Nation soldiers on a Fire Nation port. So what would be the use of walking around dressed as civilians in an irrelevant little town that they won’t stay for longer than a week and a half?

His mind blanks for a moment, aware of the answer, easy enough to give and on the tip of the tongue, but not willing to give something without knowing for sure how the information will be used against him even if it borders on disrespect to a superior. Then a strangely wishful whisper comes at the back of his mind, reminding him of the men and women that stuck together in the dining hall and whispered plans for the days the Princess would be away, of couples sneaking off the ship and into town dressed in plain clothes under the cover if the night, all quiet giggles and held hands.

“I… I do… Sir.”

“Call me Fusao.” He says, and is he really about to go out with Colonel Fusao of the 41st Division? “Very well, that makes things easier. Take off your armor.”

Wait.

“What?”

“What?”

“What did you say?”

“Take off your armor?” Fusao replies, looking at him as if he’s making a storm over a small matter.

Which, for the record, he is not. Hence the righteous fury that takes over him.

“You can’t just tell me to take off my clothes!” He says, half horrified and half exasperated, because he thought this was going to be something sweet like those couples in the dining hall, whispering plans to each other. “Even if you are my superior, even if you are attractive, even if I would accept your advances in another context, you can’t just— order someone to take his clothes off! That’s not right!”

He’s about to let out some more of his mind that he is dumb enough to not keep to himself when Fusao raises a hand to stop him, silencing him easily and looking at him bewildered.

“Kazuto…” He starts, hesitant, as if not sure how to go about the subject he suddenly has in hands. “What exactly do you think are my intentions?”

What— Was he serious? _His intentions_? He had asked him to take off his clothes and closed the door behind his back, what other intentions could a grown man have for that? He doesn’t say any of that, of course, but his face must do the heavy work for him.

“Oh, I see.” The Colonel says and now he looks profusely uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot before: “Princess Azula asked me to take your armor for our mission, I did not mean to make you uncomfortable in any way.”

Oh… Oh, _no_. Oh Agni, oh no.

Kazuto wanted to be swallowed whole by the steel of the ship. He wanted to scream. He can’t be trusted to be alone for five minutes, can’t be trusted with his own mouth.

“If her Highness orders it.” Kazuto answers, bowing so he doesn’t have to meet his eyes, hands awkwardly shaping the symbol of the flame, feeling red from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. “Could you wait outside? While I change?”

“Of course.” Fusao says, nodding a couple of times before turning for the door, stopping by it for another second of hesitation. “I would take you on a date first, by the way. I wouldn’t be so coarse about it.”

“Of course, sir, I’m so sor—”

“Fusao.” He corrects, and when Kazuto looks up, the colonel smiles gently at him, with a youthful charm that looks strange and perfectly natural in his face. “If you meant what you said before… I wouldn’t mind having dinner in town when I return from Omashu.”

 _Oh_. His stomach does a strange fluttering thing. Dekku’s food might not have agreed with him. Yes, it was the food, just the food.

“I wouldn’t mind either.” A pause. “Fusao.”

His smile grows even wider, if that’s possible, and Kazuto reddens even more, if that’s possible too.

“I’ll count the days in Omashu then.”

The Colonel closes the door behind himself.

Kazuto buries his face on his hands.

* * *

They're off to the road early morning the next day, under the still somewhat dark cover of dawn so the pesky High Patent So and So won't delay them with meaningless pleasantries or, worse, recognizes the company she's keeping.

The mongoose lizards make exceptionally good time and the path is as bland as expected; all in all, the way to Omashu with the extra stop she has drafted will take only five days and the way back only three. Good time and good stops mean only that she will have good results, Azula is sure of it.

(Mostly because she will be making sure of it too.)

It's after a two days and a half ride from the port that they camp near where the first stop she planned for should be located to gather supplies and prepare for first contact. Azula means her approach to be a silent and relatively non-threatening one at first, so marching in with mongoose lizards is not he go to.

She and the Colonel lock eyes, he nods silently and moves to the bag of spare armor. The group of them is as small as it’s strategically picked: Azula herself, her brother, Uncle and the very unfortunate Fusao. It’s strategic above all else, in how she will be dividing this group to go about her intended visit, a division she only announces in the morning of said split, much to Iroh’s displeasure. 

“And may I ask why I am to remain back with Colonel Fusao?" Iroh asks,   
Azula preens under his question, not for the question himself, but for the inherent distrust in his eyes and the way he doesn't quite hide the fact he knows she's doing it on purpose as Fusao helps her brother with the more tricky clasps of armor.

“I'm sorry, Uncle.” She says, without a drop of sorrow to her. “I can't take you with us, or people will question why I'm walking with a traitor and where is his traitor nephew.” Azula continues, her voice honeyed out with the care and sorrow she never afforded him but that Zuko’s ears are not sharp enough to pick up, then moves her hand deliberately towards her ultimate argument: the man a crying Dum Dum bonded with himself. “Fusao is of my and Zuko's ultmost trust and is only here to protect you."

Iroh looks at her like she’s a venomous animal or rotten food and he’d love nothing but to throw her as far as his arms could, then at Fusao as if he was a pesky nuisance. She half wishes he would try; it would earn her extra points with her brother and demote Uncle dearest in the rankings of his affection.

It’s clear Azula is winning this tug of war of theirs, but she wouldn’t mind anquilating her competition.

“You will not take the dragon, but you will take said traitor nephew?” He asks, slowly and crankily, as if he had caught her in a brilliant loophole, but the joke is on him, because if there's someone willing to argue the case of Zuko not being left behind in risky situations that person is Zuko himself.

“Colonel Fusao and Azula packed extra armour to disguise me.” Her brother says, half-dressed already in his argument and doing the excellent work of adding to her Iroh’s discontentment. “I will pass as a guard, like I did on Zhao's ship.” A shrug. “I already did it once.”

Oh, yes, how to forget? Another example of Uncle’s exemplary care. Allowing her brother to be exploded inside his own empty ship, then making everyone think he is dead inside of killing Zhao outright (as he should have), dressing her wounded brother in leftover armor and sneaking him into the same ship the man who tried to kill him was only to let him sleep against a sack of potatoes and deep dive into arctic waters. Azula narrows her eyes at Iroh and imagines him bleeding from the neck to achieve inner peace again. There was a reason she was putting so much effort on winning this tug of war. Iroh would kill her brother if allowed.

“I would do the same for you, but we don't have any spares on your size… or any on your size." Her eyes flicker unimpressed to Uncle's long neglected physique and the very noticeable belly that came from such neglect before looking up at him again. She waits for his offended intake of air and how he parts his lips to say one useless thing or another to start speaking again, just as cheerily: “And he gets to see Ty Lee, our childhood friend! Surely you won't keep him from a happy reunion?”

She smiles at him, all sweet innocence that hadn't fooled him when he was seven and was just another jab at his pride now that she's fourteen.

Iroh does his disapproving scowl.

Azula is even more delighted.

* * *

As a rule, Aang liked to see the bright side of things. Gyatso said it was always best to think the crops would go strong when it rained too heavily for him to go outside and play. Sure, it’s a little tricky to see the bright side of things when you’re 12 and the Avatar and vanished for a hundred years, a hundred years where a relative friendly nation decided to go and start a war, destroy civilizations and slaughter people, but it was what kept him from a total collapse under the weight of guilt and the loss and confusion.

So, yeah, he liked to see the good side of things.

Here’s the good side of their current situation: the sky is blue and the sun shining.

Here’s the absolute terrible, (literally) on-fire garbage can side of things: there’s a bold red Fire Nation flag waving in the wind, proudly hung over the city of Omashu.

“I can't believe it.” He says, shocked and feeling like he should be crying but feeling too numb at the edges to do anything of the sort. He turns to Katara and Sokka, because they’re familiar and safe, and their eyes are blue like the sky and the ice, compassionate but tired, faces heavy with a somber understanding that makes him turn away again. An understanding they would not have if he had only stayed instead of fleeing. “I know the War has spread far, but Omashu always seemed... Untouchable.”

“Up until now it was.” Sokka says, rational and calm, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now Ba Sing Se is the only great Earth Kingdom stronghold left.

“This is horrible.” Katara approaches his side, turns her face to look at him. “But we have to move on.”

It’d be the sensible thing to do, if only his only friend left alive after a hundred years wasn’t in there, somewhere.

“No, I'm going in to find Bumi.”

“Aang, stop. We don't even know if Bumi's still...”

“What?” He turns, angry even when he catches sight of the tactile sensibility Sokka awards the subject of death and applies when either he or Katara are truly upset. “If he's still what?”

“A-around.” He says, unsurely, and Katara steps forward into the role Sokka doesn’t fit as well.

“I know you had your heart set on Bumi, but there are other people who can teach you earthbending.”

“This isn't about finding a teacher.” Aang presses a final time, as Omashu still burns in some corners and stinks of smoke and failure, the last safe haven the Fire Nation hadn’t ruined from his past overrun. There were few places out there that were familiar still, a handful he wouldn’t venture on unless needed less he wanted to stain his memories with bleak reality, but bleak reality had reached for Bumi. “This is about finding my friend.”

* * *

Fusao bears nothing but the loose sense of inherit loyalty to the royal bloodline towards Prince Iroh, but, as the case with the Princess and most of his battalion, Prince Zuko's love and loyalty to his Uncle is too great and visible to all but himself to be ignored, and, therefore, they are all putting up with the old general to try either to please him or to maintain his favor.

If the Colonel is to be honest, this is one of the most extreme proofs of loyalty he's ever gone through, but he keeps his Prince and Princess on his mind as he takes in a calming breath and pushes through frustration and the whim to violence.

“Prince Iroh, what are you doing?” He asks, polite and calmly.

The Prince in question has already squatted by the side of every flower or plant he found remotely interesting and started pondering out loud either or not they were (insert here a very specific species of plant that makes a specific sort of tea that Fusao did not bother paying attention to) only for it to turn out, a mark and a useless cup of hot water with grass later, to just be a plain weed that had no tea-related properties at all. Now, he is squatted on the opposite side where their mongoose lizards and way more sensible provision (which included actual tea), doting over a white flower that is too familiar for comfort to him and can only hope Iroh does not decide to put in boiling water.

“Ah, Colonel Fusao! I have made a most wonderful discovery!” The old General says, delightedly enunciating the exact same sentences he had said after picking each of his random plants from the woods and attempting to make tea out of them, shifting to the side to reveal the flower- and, yes, he knows that one quite well. “You're looking at the rare white dragon bush. It’s leaves make a tea so delicious, it's heartbreaking.” His wrinkly face frowns minutely then. “That, or it's the white jade, which is poisonous.”

Fusao feels like maybe, just maybe, he should ask for a raise from the Princess if he’s to be stranded with the Dragon of the West this often, or at the very least a rotating schedule. Nevertheless, he bites and crouches by Iroh's side to take a good look at the white flower, letting out a hum before nodding, once.

“It’s the poisonous one.” He declares, and refuses to elaborate on it.

That, it seems, confuses and displeases the general in equal amounts.

“We do not know that.” He argues, gesturing towards the white very deadly and very pretty flower he intends to drink. “It looks identical to—”

“It is the White Jade, Your Highness.” Fusao repeats himself, looking at the other with the level of respect a Colonel should afford a General. “I know it is.”

The General in question narrows his eyes in annoyance and the remains of hurt pride from all other times he had been wrong before, maybe even with a bit of the natural distrust he seems to bear with everything related to his niece, and Fusao being her second in command must place him chief amongst them, and asks, in the snobby, belittling tone only people leagues over another’s rank used:

“How would you know?”

Fusao takes a controlled breath and fights the knee jerk reaction to be snarky back, or, his preferred option, burning the flower out of spite. He doesn’t need to sass royalty, said royalty is willing to poison itself with a cup of poisonous flower tea. He doesn’t need to offend royalty, he has a date to attend when they return to the ship. He doesn’t need to murder royalty, but it would cheer up Princess Azula quite a bit.

“I was a footsoldier once, Sir. You learn quickly what may or may not kill you.” He says in an even, pleasant tone, as if he had not seen anything irking about his previous words or the way he was spoken. “The Prince and the Princess should be back tomorrow morning, Your Highness, and there are no healers nearby. I think it would be best not to risk it.”

“Thank you for your input, Colonel Fusao.”

He bows his head, stands up and turns around towards the lizards and the half-ready camp. Maybe if he pets Long Snout enough he will feel less like defying the Fire Lord’s brother on his idiocy. He can get started with dinner too, that might help- meat and vegetables and rice, simple things, easy to do, the familiar measures and the familiar actions calming for the mind. Yes, Fusao decides, he will get started on dinner and sneak Long Snout a couple of treats while at it, and by the time their food is ready, surely Prince Iroh will have listened to the voice of reason and he will only have another day to wait until their Highnesses have returned from their detour mission.

Or maybe he should just throw the tea set away.

“Hmm... Delectable tea?” Comes the General’s voice from behind him, cheerily, and then, lower and more suspiciously. “Or deadly poison?”

Fusao’s fingers grip the package where the teapot and the teacups were put away last time Iroh used them and walks into the woods, preferably to throw his charge off of a hill.

* * *

Azula walks over grass and through various circus tents and performances with only mild belittling disapproval to her eyes. There’s a strange sensation at the bottom of her stomach, very alike the one she had felt when preparing to 

“Why is she even in a circus?” Zuko asks bewildered, voice muffled under the soldier mask he has over his face.

“Something about spiritual meaning.” Azula says, sounding as exasperated as spiritual matters usually make her. Stupid things, really. The spirits were fickle beings that mostly left humans to devour each other and would doom you with no word or warning. It was better to live your life exercising control over all you could of it, and leave spirit matters to after death, since nothing one might do would possibly appease them. “And apparently life on the road agreed with her aura.”

“Sounds like Ty Lee.” Her brother replies, sounding as annoyed as her (no wonder, Uncle is a big fan of the spirits so Zuko must be as thrilled about the subject as her), and Azula thinks she can listen on the way his voice sounds both an eye roll and something close to a fond smile.

The soft idiot. Of course he’s happy to see Ty Lee after three years but not his sister. Honestly, she should start putting a little more effort on their sparring sessions if only to punish him for the overall rudeness that day on the resort that has gone vastly unpunished.

Very well, she chalks it up to tomorrow’s schedule.

“Just focus on finding her, then you can ask her motivation to your heart’s desire.”

“I’m not your lookout boy.” Her brother says, offended and prideful and too much like the 11-year-old idiot he had been for her not to bean just the slightest for getting on his nerves. He’s now a 16-year-old idiot and the joy it brings her is much the same. “She is your friend, why don’t you just send someone to get her? Why not send her a letter?”

Of course Zuzu can never let her actually have fun. Zuzu always has to ruin things. Because Zuzu is a terrible brother and she’s going to clean the deck with him the next time they spar, because Zuzu deserves it.

The answer to his question would be that they lost contact over the years. Not so much lost, as it was severed thanks to their dear, loving father. It would also be because, neither her or Mai made much effort to keep in contact with her after leaving the palace. Sure, she had been slightly… Cruel to them when children and a tad more while playing her part to Ozai, but it was rather unbecoming to not at least send her a note on her birthday or an update once a year.

She’s not telling Zuzu any of it though, because he’s terrible and Azula doesn’t whine like him.

“This is a sensible mission, Zuko.” She says, instead, lying through her teeth as easily as Uncle can recite proverbs that don’t mean a thing. “I know such subtleties are lost in you, dense and lacking as you are, but this is no matter to be discussed in letters.”

“Huh.” Zuko lets out.

Azula bristles like one of the palace’s pygmypumas, eyes narrowing.

“What is that supposed to—” She hisses, eyes narrowing and she’s halfway through turning to glare at him when she catches sight of what exactly that grunt had been aimed at.

Azula can physically feel how her brother just tilts his head to the side, under the borrowed armor Fusao and the other members of both their crews had scraped together for him to stick with her under cover and not alert Father through an errant mouth of what she was truly putting her time into getting done, to get a better look at the girl they have come to collect.

Someone who looks suspiciously like Ty Lee is upside down, lifting her entire body weight by her fingertips. It’s a very Ty-Lee-like thing to do, but still, it isn’t entirely comfortable to watch.

Azula finds herself restraining from either tilting her head or letting out her own take on ‘huh’, only because Zuko did both of those, and if Zuko did it then it is beneath her. There's a curious sort of itching pain at her wrists, however, that she pointedly doesn't try and rub away. Instead, she walks until she has stopped right in front of her.

“Ty Lee, could that possibly be you?” She asks, not sure if she's hoping for a positive or a negative answer.

Ty Lee hasn’t changed much physically. At least, that’s what Azula gathers by seeing her upside down, but she does have impeccable observation skills, so Ty Lee hasn’t changed much and that’s a given, not a guess. She still wears pink from head to toe, which is an abhorrent color but one she can tolerate for the sake of an old friend and convenient ally. Ty Lee certainly hasn’t changed at all in the way her face lights up in a gladness no human being should feel all the time, nor how her lips part into a smile so bright it might have blinded someone at some point but has no effect on a Princess of the Fire Nation nor the way she cheerly says:

“Azula!”

Then she flips from her stance, spins around in a graceful twirl and bows down before her deep to the point her forehead touches the ground. The little flatterer. Azula’s lip twitch, but she doesn’t break her stony facade though more than arching her brows slightly. Then Ty Lee is up again, running forwards to hug Azula, tight as anything, and - very well, no one is really watching - she allows herself to hide a smile behind her hair as she hugs her back. But when they part, the smile goes from genuine to stage-like. She’s still displeased with her, relative warm reunions aside.

“It is so good to see you!”

“Please, don't let me interrupt your…” She stops for a moment, raising her brow in skeptic wonder. “Whatever it is you were doing.”

Ty Lee, still smiling, does a backflip then lies on her chest with one leg stretched out over her head and the other straight up to the sky.

This time both her and Zuko cringe a controlled wince simultaneously.

Dear Agni, she has no bones.

Ty Lee doesn’t notice that, though, which is good. What isn’t good is that she pays attention to armored Zuko instead. Azula almost worries (almost being the key word) until:

“I didn’t know you traveled with guards now.”

“It’s a new development.” Azula offers, confident enough for the boldfaced lie to fly without any problems.

“Makes sense, you’re a princess.” Her friend concedes, that thoughtful pout on her face before her smile betrays something entirely different and— Wait, Azula knows that look. Agni be good, this is too much unplanned fun to be happening, isn’t it? Don’t tell her that— “Is he cute?”

Zuko audibly chokes under the helmet. Azula feels a sadistic glee. Oh, this feels like childhood.

“That’s an arguable statement.” Zuzu is spluttering, but for the sake of his disguise he cannot defend himself, he must fume silently to himself. Azula is using all of her self-control not to laugh. It’s not any day she has the chance to tease a defenseless brother, now that Uncle is around all the time and she has to keep morale in front of the 41st, so she forgives Ty Lee most of her transgressions and delights herself with just one more jab. “Some would say my guard is both daft and hideous.”

There’s no doubt in her mind Zuko would be throwing fire punches at her in any other situation. Right now, he merely sulks and no helmet can hide that, because his sulk is a physical presence, stands among them as surely as Zuko himself does.

“Well, does he have to keep that ugly faceplate on all the time?” She says, pouting even more, the pitiful pout now, with the gecko-dog eyes. “You got me curious.”

Nevermind. Ty Lee also is a terrible, deeply horrible friend, because she ruined this.

“It’s protocol.” Azula says, quickly cutting that line of conversation short, for her eternal sadness and a great deal of glee from Zuko’s part, and glances around. “Tell me, what is the daughter of a nobleman doing here?” She asks, instead, looking at Ty Lee analytically. “Certainly our parents didn't send us to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls to end up in…” Her gaze strays to the side, forever distracted by the fact Zuko's helmet is turned to a corner where a platypus bear groans as he's pulled forward, moving up to reveal that it has laid an egg. Zuko's reactions of turning slowly his head back to Ty Lee, the act a question in itself, seems the most appropriate. ”…places like this.” Azula knows her lips are soured in disgust as she turns at focus back to Ty Lee (still lying on the ground, watching the same bear and looking strangely happy to see what has happened), with more intent than interrogation, before grinning once more right about the time she announces: “I have a proposition for you.”

Finally, warm brown eyes divert their focus from the bear and his egg and towards a more worthy focus, this being Azula herself, in a wondering gaze.

Very well, time to play her cards right.

Her own golden eyes flick casually to check her perfectly manicured nails.

“My father sent me to hunt a traitor.” She informs her. “You remember my old fuddy-duddy uncle, don't you?”

“Oh yeah.” She says, careless as anything, now on her chest and elbows, but with both feet resting on her head— where even is her spine? “He was so funny.”

“I would be honored if you would join me on my mission.”

“Oh... I ... uh ... would love to.” A lie. Azula doesn't narrow her eyes, her body language betrays nothing (except for everything, apparently, by the way he shifts ever so slightly and the armor creaks with his movements, because in two weeks Zuko can pick on her displeasure like mooseseals can pick on sea currents) but she is not actually displeased by that. She watches as Ty Lee stands in one fluid and elegant movement, smiling so honestly Azula has to reign in her courtly urge to look over her shoulder less some schemy noble is in a corner taking in signs of genuine expression. “But the truth is, I'm really happy here. I mean, my aura has never been pinker!”

It's alright. Azula raises her hand to halt Ty Lee's tirade of nonsense. Her friend will change her mind soon enough. Azula always gets what she wants.

“I'll take your word for it. Well, I wouldn't want you to give up the life you love just to please me.”

It's an obvious lie, but where Zuko shifts as if he's looking for a second head to grow from her neck, Ty Lee merely bows in respect.

“Thank you, Azula.”

She turns around to walk away, for the added dramatic effect, and glares Zuko into playing his part properly lest he wants to be babysitted by Fusao next time treason side-trips take place. He does so, radiating a tough-headed disagreement and the sort of restlessness that attested to his good sense. Waiting for her to take two or three steps past him before following her, diligently. Azula counts two more inside her head before striking.

“Of course, before I leave, I'm going to catch your show.”

She can hear when her friend breaks her stance, the way her hands shift, the panicked gasp she lets out. It all adds a hop to Azula’s step. This will be easier than planned. In the few moments it takes for Ty Lee to smooth down panic and shift onto worry, Azula merely thinks of getting her friend to pack a bag of things and follow them towards Omashu (because if she has Zuko in one hand and Ty Lee in the other, Mai would never say no to joining up) before they go on their merry way to the Ryunjin.

It would be just like the Old Times: her, Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, Fusao (who admittedly was not there in the old times, but she could pretend he was one of the guards for the wishful thinking to work) and… Uncle, if she unfortunately doesn’t manage to lose him in a teahouse beforehand.

“Uh... Yeah, sure ... Uh ... Of course …”

Then hesitance is heavy in her voice, which means fear has a grip around her heart, and if fear has a grip around her heart it only takes one gentle push for Ty Lee to fall into line with her plans.

She’s fully aware that she is grinning, if only for the fact that the circus workers keep looking at her with absolute fear instead of the mere unnerved glances, scurrying out of her path thrice as fast than usual. Not that she minds, it only adds to her good mood- to her aura, if you will. Yes, she can entertain Ty Lee her silliness if she just comes with her. See, a great friend, Zuzu with turtleducks at the pond levels of great friend.

Speaking of Zuzu, however…

“You’re two steps too close for standard guard protocols.” She says, in a voice so gentle that it’s almost sing-song, but that drives Zuko to take a couple five steps back, three more than necessary. She’s not sure why, until she remembers that might have been the tone she used to tell him Father wanted to kill him when she was 7.

And that she murdered his favorite turtleduck when she was 9.

And that she burned the last known portrait of their mother when they were 11.

Okay, fine, she would avoid that when around him, but he was clearly choosing to forget all the times that tone was used on good occasions and not at-all-traumatic moments.

“I was joking.” She says, huffing.

“Oh.” He says, still sounding vaguely cautious, as if he was not sure Azula could make jokes, but takes the four steps forward nevertheless. “You’re not really planning to let Ty Lee stay at the circus, are you?”

“Now take the steps back for being an idiot— I was joking, do not— urgh.” She tilts her head back and groans, before straightening her posture. “Of course I’m not letting her in the circus, she’s coming with us.”

“She says otherwise.”

“Well, she won’t say otherwise for long.” Azula says, nodding to the girl that bows to her before leading them towards the tent set up for Azula at the outskirts of the camp.

Her brother remains both blessedly and suspiciously silent the whole way to the royal tent. It’s not until she has parted the flap of fabric and walked inside of the tent with little to no acknowledgement to the employee, which should be dismissal enough.

It is, she discovers, when Zuko walks into the tent a few seconds after, taking off the helmet to reveal a suspicious frown.

What are you planning?”

“Oh, going deaf so soon, Zuzu?” She asks, sitting in front of the dresser they arranged for her, pulling her headpiece and freeing her strands from the topknot. “On watching my dear friend’s performance tonight, obviously. You were there when I said it.”

“How exactly is watching her show going to convince her to come with us?" 

"You'll see."

"Please, tell me you're not going to torture her." He says, taking a hand to his good eye (she doesn’t like it when he does that, because that leaves only the scarred side and she doesn’t like to be reminded of his scar) and sounding physically pained by the words, or maybe by the idea they propose.

Azula ponders for a moment, her lips quirking in consideration, before merely letting out a:

“Hm.”

“Azula?” He asks, trying to coax words out of her with a gentle tone and an inviting posture. It’s a nice try. Might have worked with nearly anyone else. She ignores him to reach for her hairbrush. “Azula.” Zuko says a second time, like a hissed scolding.

“That is my name.” She admits, a pleasant tilt of her head.

“What are you planning?” He asks again, pausing in every word for emphasis and widening his eyes with such urgence that his bad eye is brought to a size it almost looks like a healthy one (but his left eye is wide to the point he looks like a lunatic).

“Nothing fatal.” She says, trying to brush her hair in peace.

“What exactly are you going to do?” He asks again, and she brushes her hair even more calmly, though her grip is as stone on the brush and there’s- she’s at the edge of her vision, right behind her, but not there, or Zuko would see her, wouldn’t be mad at her.

She’s not here, otherwise Zuko wouldn’t be here, they would be off somewhere together and she’d be alone. She chances a look upwards, sees the older face (so much like hers), sees her lips bend into a smile, her mouth rounds into a word— no, not a word, a name— her name. She waits for her to speak it, doesn’t dare to admit she misses hearing it.

“Azula?” But that’s Zuko's voice. Azula blinks and when she opens her eyes, Zuko is standing where Ursa had been a second ago. He looks concerned, the way he did back at the palace, but a little less life-threatening concern and more unsure-of-many-things concern. She places her hairbrush down and stands up, because she can’t trust mirrors right now, walks towards the folding screen so she can change into fresher clothes for the afternoon. “Azula, answer me.” He… pleads? Oh, he is concerned about many things, yes. She’s stupid, one of the things is her. She shoots him a not-impressed look over her shoulder and sees his shoulders relax slightly, even though that’s one of her most threatening expressions. Dum-Dum. She steps behind the screen. Zuko goes on as planned. “Azula, come back! Azula, you can't torture her—!"

"Psychologically!” She says, fairly aware she sounds like a 9 year old all over again, and this is a childish discussion. If she was in the palace, if she followed Father’s advise, she would threaten her brother into submission and kill him if he asked anything else. Here, she merely rolls her eyes. “I'm not going to burn her!"

"It's still torture, Azula!" He says, and she can see the shadows at the left side of the tent as he throws his hands up in exasperation.

She knew that better than most.

Her brother keeps on ranting and Azula smiles to herself, reigning in a soft snickering.

* * *

Dinner is terrible, through no fault of Dekku’s cooking, but through plenty thought of their crewmates.

He knew he shouldn’t have explained why he was not wearing armor He should have just said he was being lazy.

He hates these people.

“Maybe Fusao will come by later and ask you to take off your small clothes.” Hanako says, because Hanako is inherently a terrible person and she delights in making people feel terrible. “For the Princess’ mission, of course.”

Kazuto flushes furiously and Tanako leads the chorus of laughter that engulfs their table like a maddened crowhyenna, spilling half her drink over the table and dishes in the process. Now, not only is he embarrassed but his dinner is coated in a generous dose of wheat ale it had not been before.

“Come on, lay it off, people.” Genji says, laying a comforting hand on Kazuto’s shoulder, shaking him comfortingly. Genji is a lovely person, off to rescue him from the horrors of public humiliation, so he leans against the Hawker, confident that he will protect him. “I’m sure Fusao will take him to dinner first. For the Princess’ mission, of course.”

He’s going to explode from embarrassment. The laughter rises thrice as loud, and Kazuto is pretty sure that even impassive Jee is laughing now. If he wants to be extra neurotic, those two tables closest to them are shaking with (albeit quieter and way more polite) laughter too. He shrugs off Genji’s hands and grumbles over his ruined evening meal. Fusao better take him to an awfully great restaurant or else he will never look him at his handsome face again.

“I hate you.” Kazuto mutters.

* * *

“A secret passage?” Sokka asks. “Why didn't we just use this last time?”

They're under Onashu and Aang is putting all of his strength to open the entrance to the tunnel he and Bumi used to get up to extra mischief when they were particularly set on not getting caught. Finally, it pops open when he pulls at with his glider and sewage falls down from it rather violently z smelling as bad as he remembers.

He guesses some things don't change, even after 100 years.

“Ugh!” Sokka lets out, backing away from the indistinguishable mess of pasty rubbish as Katara scrunches her nose and waterbends the droplets that fell on her pants away.

Aang grins.

“That answer your question?

Sokka's answer is another disgusted noise. It could've almost cheered Aang's spirits.

Almost.

* * *

Fusao returns a few marks later, with his spirits considerably cheerier and his hands completely emptier, the sound of the porcelain set breaking against the stones below a lovely one that he would not forget so soon.

(It wasn't often that he was spiteful, but he could indulge his worst instincts from time to time. Times when he was exasperated enough. Times such as when your superior officer insists on drinking poison. )

He steps into the clearing with a small hum to the back of his mind and a hop to his step, sidestepping the mongoose lizard's tails and scratching their scales affectionately before moving to the center of the camp where a small bonfire burned weakly. In the bonfire, there's a small pan and by the pan, an empty bowl. Prince Iroh sits hunched over, his back to Fusao, probably cross with the fact he disposed of their only tea set.

Not that Fusao really cares. He scratches Long Snout's scales some more and coos at her gently.

“Colonel… Remember that plant I thought might be tea?”

Fusao freezes mid way towards their provisions, snapping his widened gaze to look at the Prince, his back turned to him, his face hidden from him.

Agni, no.

Not in the middle of the night. Not in the middle of _nowhere_.

“Your Highness...” Fusao starts, shocked, shaking his head to himself. “You didn't…”

“I did...” He says, turning around to reveal his face swollen and covered in red marks, his throat with rashes about his also increasingly bloated throat “And it wasn't.”

 _I know that_ , Fusao feels like screaming, _and I told you that too!_

“When the rash spreads to my throat, I will stop breathing.” The General continues, calm as anything, before his voice wavers in the excited manner that landed them here in the first place. “But look what I found.” He brings his hand up and holds out his arm to reveal berries- Oh no, no, not those berries! Where did he keep _finding_ those?! “These are bacui berries, known to cure the poison of the white jade.” His eyes narrow suspiciously then, and it almost looks like they’re closed from how swollen his face is. “That or—”

But Fusao is already stepping forward, damming all protocol to spirit limbo or worse, because those in Iroh’s hands are the—

“— maka'ole berries that cause blindness.” They say at the same time as Fusao grabs the branch of berries from his hand, setting it on fire less the Prince tries to grab it again and hurling the burnt remains into the bushes.

“Ah.” Iroh says, after a moment’s silence. “So it was.”

Fusao doesn’t need to scream at royalty, Fusao doesn’t need to scream at royalty, Fusao doesn’t need to scream at royalty, Fusao doesn’t need to scream at royalty.

( _He really does._ )

“We need to get help.” Fusao informs him, voice trembling with the urge to go some octaves higher. 

“But where are we going to go?”

You should have thought about that before drinking poison flower tea. Spirits help him if his prince and princess’ royal uncle dies from a flower when placed under his care.

“We will get one of the lizards and find a healer.” He declares.

Fusao looks mournfully at the camp, fully prepared that he now must dismantle, with dinner neatly packed in their provisions. He sighs and goes about saving a royal's life: he extinguishes the bonfire, gathers the folded tents and hides them over branches and leaves, tying their mounts by the same spot and setting food for the other lizards for a day and a half.

From there, it's all a matter of picking a Prince Iroh scratching himself frantically up and throwing him (a tad more carelessly than needed) on the saddle of Long Snout before climbing aboard himself.

* * *

Zuko may be as awkward and oblivious as a turtleduck, but Azula is a people person. She knows where to strike to break someone's spirits, knows what to push to get someone to act in desperation, knows which parts of the body get a truthful confession if maimed the right way and knows how to get someone to change their mind.

It's night and two performers in dragon's costumes are dancing for her entertainment. The circus master (impoverished background, ambitious, responsible for his own social ascension, empathetic but too cowardly to ask, people pleased, willing to compromise some of his morals to get a start) comes to stand before the circus' main ring, proudly addressing the small crowd.

“We're deeply honored to have the Fire Lord's daughter at our humble circus” He says, grandiose in his words but not respectful. The arrogant little man is using her as an attraction as much as anything else in this circus, using her presence to make this dump of a place seem more than it is. Very well, she's in a good mood, she'll allow him this much seeing as she's about to steal away his best acrobat. “Tell us if there is anything we can do to make the show more enjoyable."

Azula smiles like the cat who got the cream, all teeth and impeccable lipstick, her voice a pleased rumble:

“I will.”

They look up, her and the circus master and Zuko too, at the square of bright lanterns set up to frame the next attraction, to Ty Lee wearing very (abhorrently) colorful clothing, balancing over one hand in a cart over the ropes, well above their heads. Nothing too bad, nothing that would suggest she didn't have bones like before. Azula must grudgingly admit Ty Lee is exceptionally good in this impressive nonsense, even if it is a waste of her potential and skills. Still, were Ty Lee to be anything than perfect, that would be quite the fall. Her golden gaze flickers to the net for only a moment before she looks up at her friend again, smugly assured this is her last performance.

“Incredible.” Azula says, only mildly faking the awed inflection to her tone. “Do you think she'll fall?”

“Of course not.”

“Then wouldn't it make it more interesting if you removed the net?”

Azula looks directly at the circus master as his face twists in concern. In the corner of her vision, Zuko's whole body tenses under the armor, his posture for once in his life perfect and completely straight. She knew he would disagree. . It was voiced as a curious suggestion, but the three of them know it is anything but.

“Uh... The thing is ... The performers …”

“You're right, you're right. That's been done.” She dismisses, watching relief wash over the old man's face before resting against her seat once more, but Zuko is not deceived, because he knows the sister he has and he can see her eyes still on the circus master. So he can learn how to be smart. That's nice to know. “I know. Set the net on fire.”

“Of course, Princess.” He replies, worried once again, but moving to comply and instruct some of his firebending employees to set the net ablaze.

“Azula.” Comes Zuko's familiar hiss over her shoulder. He is standing closer than he should again. Not that smart then. “What are you doing?”

“I thought we had talked this through at the ten, Dumb Dumb." She replies, all practised easy and dark satisfaction. “I'm giving her the encouragement she needs to say 'yes'.”

The net is set on glorious fire. Ty Lee looks concerned from what Azula can see from down here at the consuming and very life-threatening flames beneath her, but to her friend's credit, she continues with her act.

Very well. A little more pressure to break bone. Azula can do that.

“Brilliant, just brilliant!” She lets out, her voice ecstatic as a child, and sounding so pleased and excited that even if the white haired man has his fists balled and seems to be hoping to Agni that Ty Lee doesn't fall (she won't, Azula knows her), he will not deny her when she turns and asks him happily: “Ooh, what kind of dangerous animals do you have?”

The circus master looks up, and he almost looks hopeful that he can change the subject to the animals and save Ty Lee from her flaming doom if only he distracts the Fire Princess with a ferocious animal or two.

“Well, our circus boasts the most exotic assortment—”

“Release them all!” She cuts him off, because she's not cruel enough to brew any more hope in this pathetic little man.

The circus master looks utterly shocked by Azula's command, she nods with a smile and he scatters. Just in time too because Zuko, the ever-green idiot steps to stand by her side then.

“Azula, that is enough.”

Oh, dear. He sounds just like Mother. How charming.

“Quiet, Zuzu, she will not die.” She looks at him, smirking delightedly before averting her eyes to the beasts that take over the circus ring, under the flaming net. Absolute chaos. Perfect. Ty Lee must be terrified.

“Psychological, remember?" 

“She can slip and fall and die at any moment.” He urges her, speaks to a better nature Azula doesn't really own. “You don't know if she's good enough to keep going through this.”

She does, actually, but that's not the sort of answer her brother needs to hear.

“If she's not, then it's best we find that out here, unless you fancy carrying dead weight into a coup.”

“She's your friend.”

“And I am hers. Therefore, I'm giving her the chance to die a simple death in a circus instead of a gory one in a battlefield.”

“Azula.”

Zuko needs to learn who's giving orders here, needs to know he won't secure loyalty with breadcrumbs alone, so she ignores him still and impassively watches the net burn and the animals rage about.

She's allowed to remain impassive for all of one mark.

That is because Zuko decides to disregard his safety and their mission and step past her, jump from the palanquin they're in and to the midst of the wild raging animals. As per instinct, she leaned forwards slightly, the dull panic at the bottom of her stomach and the sense of urgency almost bringing her to her feet, almost making her follow him, but she digs her nails on the arms of her chair instead.

“Oh, dear.” She says, angry and polished as always, crossing her legs imperiously as the circus master watched her in horror. “I would take the animals away, if I was you. My useless guard may just harm one of them while digging his grave."

The man widens his eyes, and Azula is not sure if it's at the possibility of having his property damaged or at the clear admission on her part that this man in front of him is dead and doesn't know it. Of course, her brother is not bound to die, per say, but the guard will have to be less they want her authority questioned.

Zuko maneuvers around the variety of creatures the circus own, as if it's second nature to survive amidst dangerous animals, jumping into the empty spot of ground the beasts' tamers have opened for him by tugging their pets away by their collars, strikes a grounded stance that she taught him, the absolute idiotic traitor, and points four fingers aimed at the net, bending fire away from the charred ropes and letting smoke out of his other hand, into the direction of the open flap tent.

The world freezes around them; the audience doesn't dare to breathe, the circus master doesn't dare to speak, Ty Lee doesn't dare to move. Zuko and his ridiculous bravery, his loyalty to people that are vague memories of years ago, those nice and sweet ideals mother drilled into his head and the suicide tendencies Iroh made little to no attempts to strip our of him. She should have left him back with Uncle and Fusao, being babysat as the baby he is. Now, she has to wrap herself in a cloak of cold control and let the anger exhale out of her through the cracks, standing up from her chair like that simple, silent act is a war statement.

Zuko seems to recover from the adrenaline and a tad bit from the stupidity too. He relaxes in his stance for a moment before remembering where they are and what he did. He stands, straight and unrepentant in his posture, and turns to her, helmet tilted up (staring her at the eyes then, are we?) and not even bothering to try and bow to convey any fear or respect of his part.

‘Congratulations, brother’, she aches to say, ‘You saved the damsel, and now we have a sword on our necks and no allies to speak of. Are you happy?’

“Guard.” Azula says instead, voice cold and promising all the many manners of hurt she has been taught to know, eyes narrowing. “A word."

* * *

Her eyes don’t shift to Zuko, she doesn’t grace him with a word and she keeps the distance between them as she marches towards her tent. Anger radiates from her, quite literally too, the heat of her inner fire withering the grass under her boots. People scatter in fear out of her way, but she doesn’t take any amusement in seeing good sense, not after such an enormous display of a complete lack of it. She pushes the flap of entrance to her tent with notable anger and stops at the center of it, waiting for her idiotic brother to deign himself fit of facing her wrath.

Azula listens, for the approaching footsteps, the swoosh of fabric, one more step and then she’s turning around with a violence powered swoop of her arm. Zuko startles into defence and deflects the flame with an almost passable stance. Almost isn’t good enough tho, and it’s certainly not enough to forgive him this teprass. They stare at each other for a moment and she punches four balls of flames at him, all neatly deflected and dissipated but never reciprocated, which gives her the opening to strike the helmet from his head and land him a blow that has him retreating two steps or so. Viciously, sbe kicks flames at his head and watches him scramble back to duck, down to his knees, his arms crossed in front of his face.

Azula stops then, only because the tent is already scorched enough and she hovers above him, poised to strike victorious.

( If she remembers the stench of burned flesh and burned hair, if she ever wondered what it was to be the one kneeling and wondered even more what it was like to be the one above, it is of no consequence. )

“If you want to be stupid, do so at the risk of your own neck.” She begins, her voice cold and her body still as stone. “And _never_ disrespect me publicly again.” 

Her brother’s hands are shaking when he lowers them from his face, as does his whole body, but when his face is bare, his eyes are burning as surely with a rage he never puts into his flames. He struggles to his feet like a newborn giraffehorse, legs shaky and unsure under his body, swaying under his own weight but determined to stand either way.

Zuko stands and sways and balls his hands into fists at his side and finds that small little part of you that does know how to be vicious before spitting out:

“Uncle was right about you.”

Her brother is not a prodigy, he's not capable of following more than half of the katas she knows with her eyes closed and with adrenaline in her blood, and he's not capable of drawing cold fire from his fingertips. Despite all those facts, his words are a crack of lightning inside their tent, sending electricity and sparks everywhere, announcing a thunderstorm about to rage.

Azula narrows her eyes, cocks her head, refuses to be intimidated by her naive, foolish brother.

“Oh, was he now?”

“He was.” Zuko says again. He's shaking his head repeatedly and his face twists for only a moment into something so raw and pained and alike what she had glimpsed on the floor of that cursed room, with Uncle hovering above him and screaming for a healer, that she almost if drawn to take a step back. His face goes back to anger. She doesn't retreat. “I should have never have believed you. I should never have come.” _That's_ not true, she means to say, _Stop being dramatic_. He should have believed her and he should have come with her, because she's his sister and better chance at survival, if returning home. A few persuasive tactics should not have changed things. “And if Ty Lee wasn’t smart enough to not make the same mistake before, she sure will be after your little show!”

"I am trying to earn her loyalty in the most reliable way, you absolute fool!"

"Through fear!” He screams, throwing his hand back towards the opening of the tent. “What is the point of hating Father, of rallying our troops to dethrone him if you're going to use the same methods as him?”

“ _Be quiet!_ ” Azula hisses in warning.

“What's to say that when you have a little more power, setting a net on fire and sending a battalion of new recruits to slaughter will be that different?!"

“How _dare_ you?” She snarls, taking a step forward but Zuko doesn't cower this time, takes a step to meet her head on.

“Am I lying?” He asks, his angry face merely a palm away from hers, but his voice is even, sounds grave and final. “You’re not any different from Father right now.”

She doesn't. She really doesn't. He thinks he knows what father is capable of doing just because he got burned. She's plenty different from father right now. Father would have killed him. Azula merely gathers her hurt close to her stomach and shuns it away before ordering him to:

“Get out.” Her voice sounds cold and her eyes must look like steel; there's no space in this war for silly playful moments with her brother.

Zuko doesn't look hurt, doesn't look surprised, doesn't even look disappointed. He merely takes a step back, his eyes look around the floor before he ducks to grab the helmet she tore from his head. He gets up, still looking as fake in his reactions as a bad actor enacting a bad play, his hands shape the flame and he bows in a way a Prince shouldn't have to towards a Princess but that a banished man ought to if they want the royal to consider keeping his life.

“Your Highness.”

He doesn't look up again. He just leaves.

Azula didn't think he would.

A shadow moves at Azula's left; dressed in red, long and smooth dark hair, reproachful eyes, shaping her name with her lips in disappointment.

Azula throws fire at her direction with a scream before she can utter any words.

( She's not there. Not really. But it makes her feel better. )

* * *

“You two must not be from around here. We know better than to touch the White Jade, much less make it into tea and drink it.”

Fusao holds back a long suffering sigh, sat on the bench a few feet away from the girl and the general (who should count himself lucky that they managed to arrive in this small hospital before they closed for the night), watching as his Prince, after being smacked for scratching his rashes, now red and swollen in the cheeks neck and starting to redden more around the shoulders, merely lets out a 'whoops', without glancing at the Colonel's direction.

“So where are you traveling from?“ She asks, calmly attempting small talk as if they had stopped by tea and not nearly at the middle of the night, one of them half-dying.

“A port city three days from here." Fusao says, fully at ease with sprinkling things that are true in his mix to weave a more certain lie.

“Do you have names?”

Names?

Of course they had names.

 _Everyone_ had names.

So why couldn't Fusao think of any?

He sees the daughter turns to see the general scratching reddened skin and slapping his hand away.

“This is my…” He thinks for only a second, before smugness and revenge and a sick sense of satisfaction are cracking his face apart in a grin. “Granduncle Dum Gai.”

General Dum Gai fixes him an angry look that no self-poisoned-despite-great-ans-multiple-warnings should ever feel entitled to. The daughter passed by to take a lotion from a jar and returns, slathering it over the more inflamated areas.

“Yes, and this is my dear grand nephew, Wu Mei.”

Fusao narrows his eyes at the General glares angrily at Iroh, thinking vaguely that perhaps he should have let him eat those berries after all, forcing a pleasant smile to his features once more when Song turns to look at him.

“Dum Gai and Wu Mei, huh.” She says, arching her brow playfully, as if she doesn't believe a word they're saying. He wouldn't blame her if she didn't. “My name is Song. You two look like you could use a good meal.” Song doesn't even look at the prince's direction when she firmly slaps Iroh's hand away when he lifts it to scratch his rash, only smiles a little wider when Fuzao can't keep his own smile to himself at witnessing the scene. “Why don't you stay for dinner?”

Earth Kingdom people don't bow to show gratitude, so neither does Fusao in front of an Earth Kingdom girl, but they do nod. It doesn't feel enough, but it's what he has in hands that won't give him away, so the Colonel nods before moving to decline her invitation.

“We are grateful, but we really should be moving on.”

Song narrows her eyes a little at him, and pouts, before shrugging and screwing the cap back on the lid of the cream she has used for General Iroh's treatment. Nothing about her body language says defeat, however, so Fusao readies himself to excuse himself more definitively when;

“That's too bad." She says, with an innocent smile before turning to say the next words directly to the Prince. “My mom always makes too much roast duck."

Fire and ash, _why_?

“Where do you live exactly?” Prince Iroh had said, excitedly, and Fusao had pressed his forehead to Long Snout's side to curse lowly in exhausted exasperation and that had been it.

Barely a mark and a short ride later (a ride he had had to walk through, with a healing General and the girl in his mount's back while he himself was left to use his feet and guide the mongoose lizard by the reigns, wondering silently what was the upside to this gentleman conduct thing anyways), they arrived in the girl's modest house, were greeted by her equally friendly and equally kind mother and ushered into the kitchen with two extra sets of plates to place on the table wherever they preferred to sit.

“My daughter tells me you're refugees.” The mother announces, setting down a platter of roast duck in the middle of the table and taking a seat. _She does?_ , he thinks, bewildered. Fusao's eyes flicker to the girl, apparently named Song, then to her mother, then to Iroh. He and Iroh don't much look like refugees, they aren't underfed or too poorly clothed, even if they are skittish with their answers and distrusting of people (he more than the General, apparently). “We were once refugees ourselves.”

He sneaks another glance at Song and she meets his eyes, her face becoming alight with a secretive smile that too soon wanes into a sad one.

“When I was a little girl, the Fire Nation raided our farming village.” She says, and suddenly Fusao feels even less inclined to eat their food and take their hospitality under false pretences than before. “All the men were taken away. That was the last time I saw my father.”

He has to be truthful. He can't repay her kindness with lies the whole night he has to be truthful about one small thing, at the very least. He has to be.

“I haven't seen my father in many years.” He offers, the word awkward and foreign in his tongue for the lack of use.

“Oh.” Song says, her kind face now sorrowful. “Is he fighting in the War?”

His fingers become stiff and he turns his face down towards the bowl of food before it can do what he knows it will: drain and harden all together. By his left, Prince Iroh slurps up a bowl of noodles, trying to appear less conspicuous than he is, but he knows better, they both do — he's listening just as intently, gathering intel to use later, to form an opinion perhaps.

Fusao sets down his dish, ever so mindful not to be loud or impolite or to draw too much attention to himself, as sensible missions often required of them, as survival demanded of them.

His voice is just as cautiously emotionless when it comes out, tempered with an even tonality that won't make it sound as hollow and indifferent as his heart feels every time he thinks of the man.

“He died in it.”

* * *

She goes to him first; it should be sign enough that she’s waving him a white flag. The other sign is that she's willing to admit she was excessive in her punishment and perhaps not fully sensible in her approach to convince Ty Lee.

( It's as close as an apology as she'll go, so he better be satisfied with it. )

Azula finds him on the outskirts of the camp, where the illumination is clearly lacking and he can attempt to clean his scorched (and borrowed) helmet without having one terrified or another recognize him as their banished prince, run off screaming about it to her and make the whole situation way messier than it already is. No, instead Zuko is just… Sat there, wrapped in darkness, his back against the stripped fabric of her tent, gloomily scrubbing his helmet with his sleeve, glancing occasionally at the night time horizon as if he means for the stars to shine an answer through codes at him.

“You are still here.” She says, neutral even though she had feared he had dashed into the woods, never to be seen again.

He doesn’t look up at her. It’s way more bothersome now that he is doing it than it was when she was the one ignoring him.

“Sorry Zuko” He says, ducking his head so he’s scowling down at the almost fully-recovered helmet, bitter as only a sixteen year old could be, still refusing to look at her. “I didn’t know I was banished from the circus.”

Azula twists her lips and scrunches her nose with distaste. He’s being really dramatic, it wasn’t even that serious of a confrontation.

_You’re not any different than Father right now._

She wasn’t.

And the fight hadn’t been that bad. It hadn’t. It wasn’t that serious. It really wasn’t. He was just exaggerating. She hadn’t been that bad.

(Had she really?)

“Are you still hung up on that?” She says, trying to diffuse the seriousness of the situation, rolling her eyes condescendingly.

Which, apparently, was the wrong thing to say, given how Zuko bodily turns towards her, anger and offense radiating off of him in waves of heat that just scream at Azula she didn’t know how to read her brother as well as she thought, his good and bad eye staring at him with the same aggressive incredulity.

“You threw fire.” Zuko says, slowly, as if intending to punctuate every word face with painfully clear emphasis so she sees the error of her ways and how exactly gigantic those errors were. “At. My. Face.”

She does not cringe. She does not.

He never burned her, Ozai. The dangerous promise of heat and the example of her brother's burns were enough to keep her in line. Like a well-trained dog. It doesn't mean, however, that she didn't fear his flames, no matter how weak and pathetic of a bender he may actually be. If she has a healthy fear of flames too close to her face from only watching the atrocity of an Agni Kai Zuko was subjected too, she can only imagine what her brother felt when she kicked those flames so close to his own face mere moments ago.

Had someone done this to her, she would not be entertaining conversation with them. Had someone done this to her, they'd be dead.

“I can see how that might have been…“ There's a pause where she searches her brain for a neutral word to admit her fault without sounding too guilty. “Inadvisable.”

“It was a horrible thing to do.”

“… Yes.” She says after a moment’s hesitance, like admitting defeat, but owning up to it is better than having to say those three little words Mother always forced her to spit out.

“It was cruel.”

Another pause, some more willpower.

“That too.”

“You were an oxass.”

She doesn't have to take this, not even for her Zuko.

“Are you quite done, brother?” She asks, not even bothering with the honey, letting poison and steel shape around her voice in peace.

Zuko has the nerve to shrug at her and still keep his legs close to his chest, still ready to roll away at the first proof she offers that she is still a danger, so she keeps ignoring the discomfort of keeping her hands behind her back and far from him and keeps them behind her back.

“You still haven’t apologized.”

“And I will do no such thing.” She insists, because there are lines she will not cross.

“Then I’ll stay right here and regroup with Uncle after.” He says, turning his face away and crossing his arms. “Have fun at Omashu.”

 _Agni be good_ , she thinks, and half wants to partake in this childish little fit of his and throw her head back and groan like she did when she was a kid and he was being as annoyingly stubborn now. If she goes with only Ty Lee to Onashu she will only have half of the support, plus Uncle will _absolutely_ take the chance to twist Zuko's mind and disappear through the Earth Kingdom and she's too busy _staging a coup_ to chase him around this spiritsforsaken land.

“Are there any negotiable terms to persuade you otherwise?” Azula spits, shaking from barely contained annoyance and a fluttering fidgety thing too that claws at her stomach in Zuko's direction, and she must admit this being nice thing feels like having her teeth pulled out.

“One.” He offers, narrowing his eyes, as if evaluating whether or not it's worth to even share it.

“And what might that be, pray tell?”

Zuko lifts his chin at her imperiously, like a true Fire Nation Prince — he couldn't have better timing to find his royal blood, could he? Of course he couldn't, it was _Zuko_ and if the last hours were anything to go by, Zuko lived to spite her — and says his next words as if daring her to disagree.

“We do things my way.”

Azula feels like she made a terrible bargain, but she doesn't back off from it.

* * *

Ty Lee did feel a little bad about the whole situation — partially because the situation had been designed by Azula to make her feel bad but also because she had not meant for the guard to die. She was just flirting idly, she didn't mean for him to fall in love with her and then defy Azula!

And now he was for sure dead, so she couldn't even say she hadn't meant any and all flirting that had been involved.

She'd keep him in her thoughts and send good energies to his deceased soul and hope it guides him to better planes, because… Defying and disobeying Princess Azula of the Fire Nation to her face mustn't have granted him a very peaceful demise.

She stops outside the newly-upgraded-to-royal tent, shifting from a foot to the other nervously. It's not like Azula to do this sort of mind game, invite people for tea in her tent. No, when she wants things from people she steps into their personal space and makes sure they know they won't ever be safe until they give in to her wants. Considering the very public demonstration of that a few hours ago, she knew Azula wouldn't back away from getting her demands met this time. And after her intimidation tactics that were completely ruined by her now-horribly-deceased guard, she would probably be more aggressive in her ways of getting what she wants.

Hence why the need to stop and take a fortifying breath before walking into whatever show of horrors has been laid ready for her.

Well… Better to face the komodorhino's horn then be stomped by their paws, as they said.

“Azula?” She asks, cheerily though a bit anxious still.

“Come in.” The response comes from the inside.

Ty Lee bows her head as walks into the tent and towards the komodorhino's horn.

When she walks past the flap of fabric, she smiles like the airy, bubbly idiot so many people think she is and does _not_ show how absurdly shocked she is to see Azula's guard not only alive but sat by her side, no formality or hierarchy being kept.

She didn't kill him? Whyever not? This is not the sort of offense Azula would allow to be brushed off, not even in her best moods. And she had not been in a good mood at the end of that. Was he a lover? Maybe she would just maim a lover. She might have maimed him. Or, worse, maybe she would maim or kill him in front of her to get Ty Lee to do what she wanted her to.

“Take a seat.” Azula instructs, waving gracefully to the pillow across from her, in-between the table with tea and biscuits she cannot fathom where Azula got them from. She sits, fairly aware that there's no honeymilk biscuits in circus' provisions but not quite picturing Azula walking around with those in her bags either. “There's sensible information I withheld from you before that I would like to share. Life threatening sensible information.” “The conversation we'll have inside this tent must stay inside this tent. You have to swear on your life that you will not share this information, or, and I mean this in the most neutral way possible, I will take it to make sure no one will leak it."

“I…” Her eyes flicker from Azula to the guard than to Azula again. “I swear.”

Azula's golden gaze stays on her for a while longer, evaluating, cold and practiced distant for a long-short while before her lips pursue in— Ty Lee can't quite tell… Concern? Hope? A mix of those, a wishful worry? Her eyes stray away to her right, to the not-dead-guard by her side, not without a fair amount of harsh judgment to harshen whatever scraps of softness have crept into her eyes.

“You choose if you believe her.” She declares finally, crossing her arms. “It's your neck.”

There's a long second of waiting for whatever should follow a conversation such as this one; then again, it might have been a short second, and it’s just the tent and the tenseness and the threats that make them feel longer. Then it happens: the guard straightens his figure, his hands close in fist and immediately forcefully flex into a more relaxed position, his fingertips tap nervously against his rights before he lifts his head too, his hands rise to his helmet, purposeful in their actions, spin the iron to the side and takes it off.

Ty Lee's breath gets stuck in the back of his throat.

“Zuko?”

The boy smiles, hesitantly, it pulls at the scar that she had heard about but never seen and that she has to hold herself back from crying or caressing at it's sight. The smile, however, looks much the same.

“Hey, Ty Lee.” He says, sounding so quietly happy she doesn't feel bad at all when she flies in his direction and wraps him in a hug. Zuko freezes under her and Azula sharpens into a ready-to-fight stance, but then he relaxes and returns the hug awkwardly, patting her back. “Yeah, I missed you too.”

“I haven't seen you in so long! You grew up so much, you're taller! And you're growing your hair on the sides? Why is it so short in the sides in the first place? Were you bald? Oh, Agni, I can't believe you're here with Azula of all people—”

“I take offense to that.” Said girl lets out, and Ty Lee pulls back from the hug to smile apologetically at the very unhappy princess.

“Sorry, Azula.” She says, shrugging guiltily, before turning her beaming smile back to a fondly amused Zuko “How are you together? Aren't you banished? Did your father unbanish you?"

“No.” Zuko says, backing away slightly as if the topic makes him uncomfortable. “He didn't.”

Well, she doesn't want him to be uncomfortable. She changes the subject before he had to properly address the questions and sees at the edge of her vision Azula places her hands at her temples.

“And you're going to Omashu together! That's so nice! Mai is in Omashu isn't s— _Oh Agni, Mai!_ ”

Azula winces as the last words are shrieked and Zuko curses under his voice, making a pained face but not pulling away from her as if in principle.

“What about Mai, Ty Lee?” Azula asks, in a voice older and tired-er than time.

“She's going to kill me!” Ty Lee shrieks again, bringing her hands to her hair, horror taking over her as the realization dawns on her.

“Why would Mai want to kill you?” Zuko asks, slightly bewildered.

“I flirted with _you_! Well, I didn’t know it was you, but I flirted with you, and Mai likes you, so she’ll be mad and murder me!”

“Ty Lee…” Zuko starts, and when she loks at the siblings, both of them are looking at her as if she’s being an idiot - which isn’t nice, at all. “I have known Mai nearly my whole life, and she has through all of those she only liked one person. And that isn’t me.”

“...Really?"

“Really.”

“Who… Who does she like then?”

“You can read auras but you can’t read the room?” Azula asks, voice caustic and head tilted back.

“Azula!” Zuko says, almost like a noble lady that found a comment particularly scandalous, turning to her with a face that threatens to break into a grin. His sister fixes him an unimpressed look, the picture of a woman who said what she said and did not regret it.

“Well, you’re in charge, brother dear. When exactly is the best time to mention, you know…” Azula waves her hands carelessly over the table and to the tent in general. “The fact we're committing large scale treason?”

“It certainly wasn’t now!” Zuko says, and his hint of a smile is gone, replaced by a scowl, and he’s turning to Ty Lee again, when Ty Lee wants no one to be turning to her, because this day seems like a wild lucid dream. “I’m sorry. I thought the people person would be more tactile in how to go about breaking this news.”

“Oh? So quick to jump the ship of being in charge, darling?” “We’re doing things your way.”

“We’re here to try and recruit you into our mission.” He says, turning his body completely to face her, and his armor creaks as she does so. “We… Azula has been gathering allies through the Nation. Generals, soldiers, politicians and other influential figures into supporting her, supporting _us_ , on taking our father from the throne.” Ty Lee holds her breath, widened eyes taking in Zuko’s pleading ones, Azula’s intense expression at the edge of his sight, and knows she did more than walk into a komodorhino’s horn, this is a bomb. “We’re staging a coup.” This is danger in every corner, this is disobedience to the throne, this is signing her own death warrant. “Ty Lee?” She looks back at Zuko, who looks hopeful and sad in equal measures, as if he’s expecting the answer to be ‘no’ but wants desperately for it to be ‘yes’. “Would you come with us if we asked you to?”

“I…” She says, blinking as she alternates her gaze from a sibling to the others, her voice unsure, her mouth open in shock. “I don’t know.”

Azula doesn't send a reproachful look at her brother, but she doesn’t need to; she exudes disapproval and Zuko’s shoulders sag defeatedly all on their own. The pair of them have on very familiar faces, expressions Ty Lee hasn’t seen since she was a child — his face sad and accepting with the quiet disappointment of being rejected by then Prince Ozai or having Lu Ten decline spending time with him as they grew older, hers the cold and smooth iron she used when Princess Ursa sent a biting admonishment towards her, unsurprised and ready to cope without yet someone else’s affections.

Ty Lee could almost think she was 9 again and they were only in the royal gardens, having tea and mooncakes while their parents involved themselves in matters above their comprehension, but the golden sets of eyes don’t really allow her that. These versions of them, sharing this tent with her and speaking of treachery to the crown and motherland of the highest caliber, know war matters too well to be denied.

( They don’t understand the same things, they never did. Azula’s sharp edges and her knick for the tactics, the plans, the numbers and the maneuvers that count to win a battle. Zuko and his morals, the kind heart and the ethics their mother had always tended on him, the willingness to speak up for those he considered his people, the burn scar a perpetual reminder of senseless violence.

She imagines them for a moment like two sides of a coin, the two chi points that keep someone’s body alive, two halves of the dao Zuko used to practice.

They don’t understand the same things, but together they understand enough. )

“Very well. We’ll stay for one more day, to keep up appearances, and then take our leave.” Azula says, resigned, her eyes pinched with dissatisfaction at the sides, face betraying none of the calculations she must be making to set her plans back to top shape. She lowers the tea that she didn’t bother to drink and lets her gaze sharpen.“I must ask you to keep your word, or we will make due of our threats—”

“ _Azula._ ”

“— our _warnings_ .” She corrects herself yet again, looking a little like she would want nothing more than to kick her brother or to let out unlady like words they were chided as children for repeating from the drunk nobles in their celebrations. “I can't wait to see how you'll top yourself tomorrow on your presentation.” Zuko turns his face to her then and frowns. Azula does not look at him but adds: “Under normal circumstances. _Without_ my intervention.”

Zuko turns his face away from Azula again and back to facing her and offers another of his dismayed smiles.

“It was nice seeing you again,Ty Lee.”

It’s not a hard decision to make. Not with them here, Mai a half day’s ride away, a new order to the world around the corner, the promise of a revolution in the air with the taste of strawbecherry candy and iron. 

“I'm sorry, Azula, but unfortunately there won't be a show tomorrow.”

The princess’ eyebrow arches curiously and the prince’s head tilts to the left slightly in perplexity.

“Really?” Azula and Zuko ask at the same time; the first glares at the former for a moment before returning her gaze with an air of annoyance to her.

Ty Lee beams a smile at the both of them and lowers her empty cup of tea to the ground, bringing her hands up to bow respectfully at both siblings.

“The universe has given me strong hints that it's time for a career change.” She gets up smoothly, bowing at the both of them. “I’ll warn the Circus Master that I’ll be leaving in the morning so he can find another acrobat until the next town. I want to join both of you in your cause.”

When she looks up Zuko is joyfully startled, Azula looks satisfiedly surprised, and Ty Lee’s smile reflects on their faces with their own unique twists to it, but they’re all smiling. 

( There’s an empty corner to her left, in between her and Zuko, where their fourth member should be. It won’t be empty for long. They’re heading for Omashu to fix that. )

* * *

“We looked everywhere.” Aang informs his friends, sadly. “No Bumi.”

Katara’s face softens in kind sympathy, then opens her arms to hug him. Behind them, Flopsie moans sadly and Sokka turns around to comfort Flopsie too by hugging his face.

“We've got a problem.” Yung says, and they break their respective hugs at the approaching man. “We just did a head count.”

“Oh no.” Katara says, worriedly, turning to face Yung. “Did someone get left behind?”

“No, we have an extra.”

The man points to something to the left. They all gaze in the direction to see Momo (whose presence in itself wouldn’t be unusual) with a baby attached to his tail.

* * *

Omashu is still a fuming pile of a former city and a Fire Nation flag hangs from it like a prideful statement.

The reports were not exaggerated in the slightest, Azula concedes, even though it had been needlessly messy when one takes into account the fact that said city’s wolfbat-shit crazy king instead of rallying his soldiers or attempt a bargain, had chosen to… Do nothing? Very well, that part of the report had been questionable to say the least, but he was Uncle’s friend, apparently - which explained the part of being wolfbat-shit crazy but not the part of being friends with His Highness, the Dragon of The West.

( Why the hell did a city have a king, anyways? The Earth Kingdom had a king, didn’t it? And Omashu was Earth Kingdom, wasn’t it? Did it answer to two Kings? This was insanity and one of the reasons they were conquering them in the first place: to bring them enlightenment and civilization and order, because the kingdom was a mess and the people survived solely by stubbornness alone and not by any wrong or right doing of their ruler’s part. )

Still she marches in with Ty Lee to her left on the palanquin, Zuko hidden under Fire Nation soldier armor on either side of her, and Uncle hidden behind them with the lizards and being supervised once again by Colonel Fusao, doing his frowning face thing that went old on day 3 on the ship and she doesn’t particularly care for anymore, thank you very much.

( Though, if she was honest, there should be a slot of free time for her to get an explanation from either of the men she left behind on camp yesterday for the... Strange dynamic Fusao and Uncle developed overnight. The reunion of their parties had been particularly strange, given how the peculiar look of her Uncle had unsettled all teenage-aged parts of their group, herself included.

"What happened to your face?” Zuko asked, horrified, when Ty Lee, Azula and herself had stopped at the edge of their clearing to gawk at the red, lumpy face of her Uncle.

“It’s a question better left unanswered.” Fusao had replied, his back still turned to Iroh, even as the old man nodded in agreement.

“Colonel Fusao speaks wisely.”

It’s hard to miss how the Colonel has two more tension wrinkles about his face, given how he is such a relatively young man and _especially_ given he had said in in some more plite terms that he would lose his shit if he stayed around him for longer than half a mark alone with her Uncle again. She had almost felt pity when she left him behind, looking like a man griping his last strings of sanity together with much effort, but she had at least told him they wouldn't take more than a day to have this done with. )

Mai is ahead of them, waiting at the end of the long street they’re being carried through, at the base of the stairs, waiting for the arrival of her royal palanquin and Ty Lee has become alight with a joy that doesn't allow her to stay put in any corner for longer than five seconds.

“Do you think she will agree to come with us?” Ty Lee asks, looking at Mai through the small window of the palanquin with barely held back excitement. Azula counts Zuko lucky for not having to deal with such open pre-reunion yearning, pressing her hands against her lips to keep any snide remarks or too-sharp smiles to herself, because those can be misconstrued as cruel apparently.

“Of course she will.” Azula says, and if her voice rings with laughter, Ty Lee either doesn’t speak on it or doesn’t notice. “She will have some great motivation.”

Ty Lee looks back at her, concerned.

“Like... The one I got?”

“Oh, no. This one is way more pleasant. Almost… Cheerful, you could say.” Ty Lee blinks confusedly at her and Azula has to turn her face away to keep her facial expressions under control. “It will work, don’t worry.”

The palanquin stops and is lowered to the ground. Azula gets out first, waits for Ty Lee to follow and then the both of them walk towards Mai, halting momentarily before her so her friend will put her hands together and bow slightly towards Azula.

“Please, tell me you're here to kill me.” Mai says, looking up at Azula with a hint of a smile to her familiarly emotionless features.

Azula meets her gaze evenly, and they all remain serious for a total of three seconds before they start to laugh, like little girls hidden behind a secret passage or another after Azula set a minister’s robes on fire.

“It's great to see you, Mai." Azula says, just to assert her dominance, placing her hands on Mai's shoulders and smiling at her before Ty Lee rushes forward like a delighted child to give Mai a big (entirely friendly) hug.

Azula doesn’t smirk at the sight, but Zuko’s body language is all too smug, and she allows herself to shift slightly closer to him and share his amusement at the sight after that… delightful bit of conversation in the circus tent. 

“I thought you ran off and joined the circus.” Mai says, uncomfortably patting her back with her left hand, looking at her curiously. “You said it was your calling.”

“Well…” She says, releasing Mai to aim a bright grin at Azula and Zuko's direction. “These two called a little louder.”

“These two?" Mai asks again, frowning at Azula and looking for someone else. Zuko snickers gently inside his helmet.

“I have a mission and I need you both.” Azula says, placing a hand on both her friends' shoulders, smiling confidently.

“Count me in.” Mai says, turning a resentful look at the Earth Kingdom castle behind her. “Anything to get me out of this place.”

Well, that was easy. Ridiculously easy too, but Azula wasn't one to turn down things just because they came easily to them. She glances at the soldiers all around them, then at Zuko for a second longer before looking pointedly up to the castle.

“We should go somewhere more private to catch up." Azula says, dismissing the guards around them with a wave of her hand.

Zuko bows along them all and turns towards a corner he can use to sneak his way up wherever it is Mai will take her and Ty Lee.

If only her bubbly friend could stop vibrating with excitement, this just might look non-suspicious.

* * *

“These are the quarters we're using to receive visitors.” Mai says, allowing them to walk in first before she does so too, affording the somewhat richly if not peculiarly ornate room another spiteful look. “By visitors, we mean you. We don't get visitors here.”

“I see…” Azula says, watching as Ty Lee immediately flops on a pink cushioned set by the table, smiling like a madwoman and huffing at her excitement. She turns her gaze to Mai once more, pointing to the wall to their left “Are those windows locked?”

“Uh… no?"

“Good.” Azula marches towards the window, opening them wide and grabbing the red table towel to wave it, a sign to her brother. “Is Omashu truly that boring? I heard the King was quite the madman, I'd expect he had left behind something entertaining.”

“No, nothing but rocks.” Mai says, looking at Azula like she has lost her mind, sending a confused glance to Ty Lee who merely giggles before gesturing to the hallway. “Should I… Get us refreshments? Or my parents?"

“There's no need, I will speak to them later.”

“I wouldn't mind some fruit!" Ty Lee interjects.

“ _Later_.” Azula says, glaring at Ty Lee and throwing the red cloth to the side; her arm is tired and, honestly, if Zuko is going to take this long to—

There's a thump against the wall by her side, Ty Lee jumps to her feet to lower Mai's hands (already in position, blades in-between her fingers ready to cut off some of her brother's) and Azula looks to the side just at the right moment to see Zuko pull himself up with the hands gripping the windowsill, seamlessly jumping into the room with the small smile he would always have about him when he got one of those stealth moves of his right.

“You're late.” She says, aiming to annoy him enough for that stupid smile to slip away. She manages, seeing how he turns to her gawking in annoyance.

“You've been waving this for, like, _five seconds_ , I'm not late!”

“Where even is your armor?” Azula says again, good mood forming when faced with her brother's offended one. “Anyone could have seen your face, Dum Dum—”

“Do you know how heavy it is to jump in full armor?!”

“Zuko?”

Oh. The both of them blink and turn to the rest of the people in the room: Ty Lee turned towards another side of the room, a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking with laughter and Mai, slacked jawed, her eyes wide, the knives she had been branding a moment ago spread over the floor as her friend's arms laid limply on either side of her. Azula doesn't even try to help her smirk.

Zuko smiles and lifts a hand in her direction in greeting.

“Hi Mai!”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wanting to know why I changed Iroh's fake name from 'Mushi' to 'Dum Gai'... I would like to say Fusao really just named General Iroh, the Dragon of The West, 'Stupid Man' and got away with it.
> 
> Well, anyways, I would like to share, as a parting note until probably next month and the next chapter, a brief description of how my main characters react to thing happening to them.
> 
> That might become a habit, because I will admit it I have written about 7 or 8 notes on how they go about life in their uniquely unnatural ways:
> 
> “With how impeccable she is with her planning, things don't happen to Azula, Azula happens to things.  
> Things happen around Zuko, but Zuko also happens in the most chaotic manner possible, so things get confused and can't get ahold of him.  
> Fusao is desperately trying to not let things happen to him, but things are wearing his patience and he's nearly snapping at things.  
> Iroh is things.”
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this chapter and surviving through the absurd word count (I tried making it shorter I swear I tried)! I hope you have enjoyed it, and we'll see each other at Chapter 1.2!


	4. 1.2: On The Rescuing of Toddlers And The Keeping of Hostages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mai is reunited with her childhood friends. Her childhood friends who are deep down into treason lane. And, sure, treason is all fun and good, but have you ever rescued a two year old from a 12-year-old bridge between spirit and human world, his two water tribe friends and a gigantic air bison?
> 
> (alternative summary: Sokka is not much onboard with many things and no one will listen to him, so you can imagine the sort of stress he's under)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Posting this chapter like 1 hour after my firist online class as TA instead of reading my assignments? More likely than you think.  
> (listen, if my classes are going to start now after we spent the whole year doing absolutely nothing and i have to have classes DURING CHISTMAS, I have rights to at least post one chapter. Spitefully.)  
> But, alas, I am glad to have you back again in this fic, and, yes, the chpater count did go up to 46 - do not ask, I do not know. How are you? I hope you're well and safe and as happy as this disaster year could make you, specially given the holidays and the last days of 2020 are approaching us.  
> Updates for this and my other fics should be even slower now, I'm afraid, becuase my classes are back at full force as well as the tiny fact my puppy, lovingly named Princess Azula of the Maltese Nation, will be getting home next saturday (in fact I am writing this sat on the floor by her toys, food and other things as they dry out after proper covid-desinfection) and, therefore, my life will be consumed by her adorableness.  
> If anyone would like updates, tune in on December 5th on my tumblr to catch me screaming about the pupper and spamming your feed with pictures.  
> But, enough talking and fretting over the future, let's enjoy the chapter and our disaster children!

They end up sending for refreshments, much to Azula's chagrin.

The other girls and herself remain seated in perfect seiza and Zuko hides in a corner as the servants bring in their food.

His feet poke out from under the curtains, because of course her brother could not be bothered to do his wall crawling to hide with some superior sense of efficacy, so she throws a pillow at his feet with some more force than the action really required and clicks her tongue disapprovingly when sailor level of swearing follow, muffled under the layer of fabrics. If Ty Lee grins and if there is as an amused flicker to Mai's eyes, that is all properly wiped from their faces when said servants walk in, heads low, trays of various assortments of edible goods in their hands in pretty ceramic bowls.

“You're dismissed.” Mai says, and they bow some more (their heads nearly on their knees now, given that they hadn't raised them in the first place) and scurry away.

When they're gone, the door closing quietly behind their backs, she gives Dum-Dum the sign he is free to re-join them (three rapid knocks on wood in a pre-selected pattern for such situations) and soon enough the fabric of the curtains is being pulled aside and the pillow that had assaulted his feet is being kicked away, mild but passionate complaining being muttered under his breath.

Ty Lee outright giggles and, for that, receives the full force of Zuko's glare.

( Which, granted, is not saying much when you did grow up with him and had been fairly acclimated to the royal status he carries about.

Ty Lee seems to be as threatened as she would be if she was under the full force of a red pandakitten. )

The point is: Zuko returns to the table, and sits to her immediate right just about the time Azula picks the bowl of fire flakes from the table to keep close to her chest and feels a small pang of pity for Mai, who fails to do the same, therefore being forced to share her source of food, knowing that nothing is safe from the barbarians starved hogmonkeys they are sharing a table with.

She's not overreacting either, the kiwigrapes _are_ disappearing at an alarming rate.

Still, Mai seems too shocked (with her actions at least, because her face went back to being expressionless after Zuko’s most cheery greeting and the quick exchange of _'I like the long hair_ ' and ' _What the hell, Zuko?!_ ’, _'Is that a dress or are those pants that look like a dress?_ ',‘ _Get out of the window_ ’, ‘ _I do feel like you’re not that happy to see me_ ’, ‘ _Out!_ '. Honestly, if she didn’t know the both of them better she’d be as convinced as their parents had been that this was an arranged marriage that would bode well) to mind the fact she will be left food-less if she doesn't fight for her survival.

Azula doesn’t much partake in the idealistic mindset of ‘royalty must look after their people’ her brother does, but she will be considerably cross if she loses an ally such as her to starvation.

“So, you were saying…?” Mai says when it’s clear the Prince is more concerned with battling against Ty Lee’s quick fingers for the cocoadates pastries. In his moment of distraction, looking at the noble girl inquisitively, the acrobat bests him and snags the two sweets to herself. Zuko snaps his face back at her, lips parting to utter a protest and Mai fingers twitch as if trying not to strangle him (a very valid struggle, in Azula’s experience). “A shipful of traitors?” She questions annoyedly, brow arching at Zuko and voice inflexion the monotone for 'please say you're kidding'.

“Yeah." Zuko says instead, nodding, and picks another fruit from the bowl. “They're all 41st soldiers.” That statement does lead her to munching at some more fireflakes to hide her smug grin; it’s been weeks and he still sounds half like an excited child and half like he’s as Agnismacked as Mai upon hearing the news every time he speaks of it. “Well, most of them, at least, but they're from the 41st. Azula saved them.” Mai's disbelieving gaze drifts slowly towards her, and Azula shrugs.

“Strategically spared." She corrects, like a shrugged off excuse.

“Saved.” Zuko says, correcting her ( _the nerve_ ) as his hands sneak up to steal a fireflake or two from her bowl. Azula narrows her eyes at the affront and smacks his hand. Hard. “Ow!” His hand is most quick to draw away, towards his chest, and her brother turns his face to pout at her. " _Azula._ "

“Don't touch my food.”

“You didn't even _want_ refreshments.”

“Alas, I was outvoted." The humiliation she was being put through these last days, honestly. A Princess of the line of Agni, the first wielder of blue flames in two centuries, master of cold fire, likely future Fire Lord, _outvoted_ by her brother and two childhood friends. She was entitled to a bowl of fire flakes of her own, at the very least. “I am graciously accepting defeat and partaking in the refreshments nonsense, but this is my food now."

Her brother doesn't look swayed to see reason anymore than he had been before her perfectly reasonable statement. Instead he looks at her as if she's an irritating 5-year-old again, which is terribly rude because Azula has never been irritating and he's not taking the fire flakes, and says:

“It's supposed to be everyone's food.”

“Are you supposed to be everyone's general annoyance?” She says, her voice bitter and sharp with a perpetual sense of annoyance Zuko brought about to her in the most effortless of manners, arching a no-nonsense brow at him and waving her hand magnanimously, indicating for him to continue on with his explanations. “Go on, don't get distracted by dear little me now, Zuzu, you are in charge. We are doing things your way, are we not?"

He scowls.

“You are a terrible loser.”

Azula scoffs at the ridiculousness of the statement and fills her mouth with more fireflakes to prove apoint (and to see Zuko scowl deepen, but that was just a fun consequence).

Azula didn't _lose_.

She didn't.

She wasn't _capable_ of losing.

Zuko very much was, if his life's story was to be spared even the faintest glance, but Azula was clearly not.

She begrudgingly conceded, yes, but she did not _lose_.

“We came to Omashu to recruit you.” Zuko proceeds, with as much tactical finesse as he probably had to gut a fish or bake a cake or weave an ornate tapestry, grabbing another handful of kiwi grapes. “We would like it if you came with us." He says, smiling like a beaming kid, and the urge to facepalm is suddenly rising inside Azula. His eyes widen in realisation and she thinks 'good, he noticed', but that's just wishful thinking because he raises his hand, placating and apologetically at Mai. "But it's your choice." The urge to facepalm brings Azula's fingertips to her temple. _Agni give her strength_. Ty Lee is giving her an indecipherable look and Azula decides food is the only alternative if she doesn’t want "It is treason and it's going to be quite violent and messy, so take your time to decide, but if your answer is 'no', could you, uh, not… Talk about the whole thing?" He says, awkward and voice slightly softer, as he pulls his shoulders in that 'i-would-like-to-trust-you-but-I-just-know-you-are-going-to-punch-me-in-the-face-so-go-for-the-unscarred-eye' hunched set, his face morphing into the pitiful expression he often used to beg.

Azula shoves her hand even more angrily in her bowl and doesn't like this, at all.

Zuko wouldn't be doing any of that if she was in charge. He didn't have to _beg_ for loyally, he was _owed_ it.

“It's treason, after all. I don't know if Father would kill Azula—”

“He would.” She interjects, because damn it all to Koh, not even the fire flakes are helping anymore.

“—but he would definitely kill _me_ —”

“It would make his whole week.” Zuko glares at her, and she shrugs, chewing a fire flake carelessly. She's only being honest on this spirit of cooperation and _talking_ he insists on having go round.

“— so it would be for the best to not tell everyone about it?”

Mai keeps her silence a little longer, and probably some hope that things might make any sort of sense in the near future while at it, staring intently at Zuko's increasingly earnest-but-ready-to-be-disappointed face for the better part of a third of a mark.

Eventually, she averts her gaze to Azula, for help to make any of what he said sensible. She doesn't particularly know how to, when it's all very accurate if not very eloquent. She backs away from the call to her aid by throwing some more fire flakes to her mouth.

Finally, Mai turns to her left, where the pink-clad Ty Lee grins expectantly, eyes like a puppy and smile bright like those on toddler's faces.

Maybe there is some merit for Zuko's Way of things, because Mai simply leans her body back, seemingly exhausted or giving up on the whole matter, with a heavy sigh and shakes her head.

“I had already agreed anyway.”

Which is about the time Ty Lee lets out a delighted and horridly shrill noise of joy, and wraps her arms around Mai's shoulders, pulling the dark haired girl into a squished hug that Mai does very little to actually avoid but does put a great front on pretending to not be pleased about. Zuko looks at Azula, smiling smugly at her, and her lips almost form a smirk of her own. She offers the bowl of fire flakes instead, her confirmation that she does indeed also see what Ty Lee's aura-reading skills do not.

Her brother grabs a handful of the offered food with a soft snicker and then they're both staring at the scene as Mai tries desperately to look impassioned about the situation she's willingly in for a moment or three more, grumbling ‘Alright, Ty Lee, you can let go now’. It’s truly tragic one cannot control the body’s flow of blood or the flush to their cheeks.

Azula tries to be polite about it, even though there is blooming laughter being held back at her ribcage, but Zuko outright snorts, too much familiarity and not a worry to him mixing rather questionably sense of self preservation, given she’s sure their friend has eight knives sewn into her sleeves.

Mai catches up to it fairly quickly, which means she tries what all gloomy dark haired valuable members of Azula’s Conspiracy try: glaring. It doesn't help her case in the slightest, fora couple obvious reasons: the first being she’s glaring at Azula, who has endured too many of father’s stares to be intimidated, and the second being she’s glaring at Zuko, who Azula glares at at least thrice a day for this exact purpose and the third being she is glaring at Azula and Zuko, who would have, between the both of them, the most intimidating glare in the whole of the Fire Nation if only her brother didn’t misuse it so. So Mai doesn’t achieve any intimidating points and mostly just looks like a disgruntled fenecpuma being held like a baby.

Zuko tests his luck and gives Mai the most innocent of smiles, is rewarded with an implied death threat (or a very thorough test of his pain resistance skills) for his troubles and leaves Azula, the ever merciful sovereign she is, to ponder that a knife or two wouldn't actually kill her brother, would they? Who knows? They might even instill in him a valuable lesson or two, and at such a small price.

( She almost jokes about scars. _Almost_. Azula refrains from it after a moment's consideration. It would be for the best if she worked the mocking of scars out from her vocabulary and she can comprise on that. )

“We should speak with the King before the Avatar and his pathetic team get into the city to wreak their usual wrevock.” Azula says eventually, in all her magnanimous mercy and other such flattering adjectives, sparing Mai of her close-contact struggle and aiding her on the path of keeping her infatuation for their childhood best friend hidden from said childhood friend for another fifteen year or so, arching a brow suggestively at Zuko. “Or Uncle gets to him and wants to have an old pal chat.”

“The Avatar is already in the city.” Mai says, and Zuko perks up at the magic word in a way he must have done for the three years at sea and that has her wishing she could truly slip from royal protocol for a second to slap the back of his head. “He attacked my family along with the resistance just the night before.”

“Are you sure it was him?” Azula asks, moving the conversation along productively before Zuko can speak his nonsense. “Not an impostor?”

“No one seems to be connecting the clues around here, but I'm sure it's him.” The dark-haired nonbender says, nodding firmly, before something in her brain says she's acting too invested in anything for longer than 0.005 seconds and she's rolling her eyes pretending she's bored of the subject again — but that's just Mai being Mai and in no way deters her from sharing useful information. “I fought him, I saw him bend. Unless there is a new airbender in the world my father has not been warned about, I'm quite sure that was the Avatar.”

“The Avatar?” Zuko asks.

“ _Zuko.”_ She says sharply and too much like Mother would say Azula’s name when scolding her, because her brother’s greatest ability is to perform a traditional sun-warrior dance over her last nerve. At least he has the decency to look shifty about that. She tilts her head at him, smiling sweet and full of teeth (though the last part doesn't seem to scare him as much as the first part does). “He’s not your problem anymore, remember?” She says, calmly and gently, he nods at her hesitantly, conceding to her point. Good. Azula tilts her head, gesturing with her hand benevolently to the table in the center of their small group. “Treason?”

“Treason.” He replies with a surer nod and turns to Mai and Ty Lee, both watching them as if they’re not really sure what to make of this interaction, and raises his head a little higher, like the Prince he rightfully is. She could almost be proud. “We should speak with King Bumi before the Avatar and his peasants come and destroy our plans.”

He does not include the nuisance that is Uncle.

She does not miss that.

They both don’t speak on either and are mostly fine for it.

“... Right.” Mai answers after a second's silence, tentative though monotone. “He’s in the box.”

“What box?” Ty Lee asks, with a frown.

Mai points at the window and up with little interest. They all look back, through the square outcut of the outside world and towards the direction their friend had indicated them, to find the stark silhouette of a metal box against the bright blue skies, dangled by a chain several measures high over the city, presumably with an earthbender former-king on it.

Well, Azula thinks, It’s certainly a way to keep an earthbender under control.

“Oh.” Ty Lee says, cheerful as ever at the dawn of their collective realization, then smiles. “ _That_ box.”

* * *

“Here we are.” She says, glancing at the lowered box she had commanded to be brought to a secluded rooftop, waving about orders from the Dragon Throne that weren’t technically issued by the Dragon Throne, but with Princess Azula there no one would really want to make objections or ask any questions. No one looking to keep their necks, at the very least.

All for the better, really. Mai didn’t have experience in conspiracies, but she did know one of the base rules was to not draw attention to it.

When she looks back, the fire nation Princess’ face is dark despite the fact they stand in broad daylight, and she has that serious somber quality to her ike the air heavy with ozone before the crackling of lightning, the roar of thunder, a blade two seconds away from cutting throat, the warmth before the flames singed flesh. Like a royal person should, she supposes.

Mai wouldn't know, she’s not royal.

( She had always wondered if Zuko had a face like this. He had always been sweet, softer, kinder, even when he was just a boy and he would scowl at anyone from the other sex. Mai had never looked at him and thought ‘he is dangerous’, never feared him like sometimes instinct would have her fear Azula. It was difficult not to wonder if it was because he wasn’t to be feared or if he simply didn’t want her to fear him. )

 _( A viperwasp in the grass_ , Father would say sometimes over dinner, _is at it’s best when underestimated_. )

( She had wondered, later, longer, if he had looked like Azula when he stood in the war meeting, all those years ago. Wondered, everytime she looked at her friend if her brother had been like ozone and warmth and sharpened edge during the Agni Kai, before he turned around. Had he been dangerous then? )

( He probably wasn’t. Either way, it didn’t matter. In the end, all he had been was burned. )

Azula looks much older than she is like this, always has. She was the youngest of the four of them, Zuko and Mai and Ty Lee and Azula, always the youngest and always the oldest nevertheless. Since they were children, she was always smart, always cunning, rarely and barely a child at all. None of them were quite kids, couldn’t be, but the memories of Azula, truly childish and smiling without a bite to it in the gardens were memories Mai kept in the back of her mind, to study under light and lenses, look for forgeries. She had been sweet and devious and unapologetically a kid once, she gathers, the youngest of them.

( She became cruel too, sure, but that was later. And she made Ty Lee cry countless times, but that was later. And she roasted turtleducks alive, but that was later. And she watched from her room’s window as a boat disappeared at the horizon, but that was later. And when Omashu fell, she was left behind, but that was later. )

Mai thinks that they all must look older than they are, one way or another. They will be older soon, when treachery isn’t just something to be spoken over kiwigrapes.

( She thinks of them, children in the gardens, Zuko and Mai and Ty Lee and Azula, and decides that then, they were clear weather. Thinks of them now, Azula by her side, Zuko behind her, Ty Lee on the lookout for wandering guards, and decides they are ozone. )

“I’ll handle it.” Azula says finally, commanding and reassuring all at once.

( They will be older and they will be lightning, but that will be later. )

Mai nods respectfully and steps away from her path, head bowed, letting Azula walk her most intimidating walk towards the King in a box with the intent of working her peculiar brand of diplomacy.

If she consciously positions herself to watch the impending spectacle that only she knows is bound to happen, she is sure none are the wiser.

Mai could have told Azula what the Princess was sure to learn by first hand experience, but what would be the fun in that? It was a very boring couple of months and a very stressful couple of days. None could blame her for finding entertainment from where she could get it.

“What’s the catch?”

Mai leans to the left, slightly startled, and turns her gaze to take in Zuko’s smirking face. She blinks a couple of times, both from the small shock of his silent approach and very close proximity as from the grander shock of seeing hints of his known, younger face in the hollows between the sharpness of age and the roughness of scars. It’s all in between one blink of an eye and another, they’re hidden behind a wall in a corner of the palace, fingers interlocked, ‘promise you won’t tell?’, and then they’re here.

“What?”

“You’ve set her up for something.” He says, indicating his sister with his chin.

“Nothing she didn’t ask for.” Mai argues her defense, and wordlessly refuses to share the joke.

“I suppose.” Zuko accepts defeat easier than usual, shrugging and turning his face to the scene in front of them again with quiet expectation.

Silence stretches comfortably by them as Azula enumerated reasons to stand by her small revolt against the throne, viciously persuasive, Ty Lee sticks her head out from the open latch that leads from the inside of the building to the ceiling they now occupy once every while like a prairiemeerkat to glance at their direction before going back under, to smile politely and only vaguely imply bodily harm in case the princess was disturbed on the hallways below to anyone who waltzed too close for comfort.

It’s a nice silence, a nice long silence. Of course they just have to break it.

“We heard news that you died.” She says, conversationally (or as conversational as these things get) and not at all an I-cried-because-of-you accusation. She doesn't need to be throwing those around (even though she did, a lot). “Admiral Zhao said your ship exploded with you inside.”

“Admiral Zhao had my ship exploded with me inside." Zuko scoffs, but overall says the words a lot more conversationally than he ought to have, even if his body language reads as peeved and offended. Mai looks at him inquisitively and he is more than quick to smooth such creases with a reassuring hand wave. “It's alright, I survived."

So this was the tone they were going to use for threats to his life… Considering the tone he had used to go about the whole ‘Join Treason Now’ discourse, Mai’s not sure she should be surprised. Some things must not change with age. She schools her features into courtly grace and keeps her words the tone of courtiers discussing the weather.

“You're glad he died in the Northern Water Tribe then, I take it?” Mai asks, bringing both her hands together under her long sleeves and assuming the resting positions of young gossiping noble ladies.

( She knows she is. A giant water spirit was much too good for him, anyways. He was terrible company on her parent’s parties. )

Zuko gives her a bemused glance. Mai gives her a one-shouldered shrug, batting her eyelashes dramatically at him, before his nose is scrunching up and he turns his face to the other side to bite down a laugh she also has to smother in her own chest. They both glance at Azula, brows furrowing in increasinging annoyance as King Bumi babbles out nonsense, and then Zuko is behind his back and he pretends to be waving about a long sleeve of his own, taking in a deep breath and assuming a posture that is not much unlike Prince Iroh’s, for the trained eye.

“I am not glad he died.” He says, nodding soberly and reaching to smooth a beard he doesn’t even come close to having, turning bodily to wave his hand in a crescent arc near her, the sort of arc that has the sleeves of Generals and nobles flapping behind them like indignant phaisantdaws, prideful expression plastered over his face, nose stuck up to Agni. “Even though I'm glad he won't be bothering me anymore.”

The small moment is short lived though, his smile fades at the edges and the humorous spark fades at the edges. He smiles at her again, sheepish, and his posture melts into his usual stance (ready to flee at any moment, one foot always bracing more of his weight than the other, ready to fight at any moment) with lowered shoulders. Mai doesn't frown, even as her hands leave her sleeves, the childish moment left behind, but she does shift closer to him for any sliver of reassurance she can provide.

“I did try to save him.” He mutters, quietly, to his feet or maybe to the ground he’s kicking at with his feet. The words are said like he doesn’t mean for them to be heard. “That isn't a death I would have wished on anyone.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before she gathers some more of the warm familiarity and the small handfuls of childish trust, sidestepping the awkwardness of three years lost with no contact, and brushes her arm with his in the most fleeting manner she can manage.

“I didn't know you were in the Northern Water Tribe Invasion.” She says, aiming for comfort, though her voice carries the words like a 11 year old had said _‘I’m sorry for your cousin’_.

However, Zuko looks sheepish, which is never a good precursor to an answer in her experience with a 13 year old him—

“I snuck in."

— and apparently still very much applicable to the 16 year old him. 

“You _snuck in_.” She says, cautiously, half hoping he is wrong. “On the invasion?”

“Yes, and on Zhao's ship."

Mai draws a deep breath, closing her eyes. She does not believe in the concept of inner peace, but she does think some of it would be needed to hear the story in full and not scream at a Crown Prince even a tiny bit. Especially not a Crown Prince one has taught to braid hair so he could join in on their braiding competitions, then taught again when he thought helping his sister with her hair after Princess Ursa vanished would be comforting to her.

( On the week following, those who looked closely could see one fine strand of hair braided, leading from behind her ear to her topknot. But it was only for the week. )

( Azula and Zuko were called in the Throne Room and their rooms were moved further apart. She saw Ty Lee sat by Azula as the princess ripped her braids apart in the gardens a few hours before she caught Zuko braiding leather on his sword handles. He looked up and didn’t smile. She sat by him either way. _‘You are doing it wrong.’_ Leather traded hands. Leather was colder than hair. _‘I don’t think she would be my sister, if she could choose’_ , he said and shook his head, _‘I wouldn’t blame her. No one would’_ . Her fingers kept braiding, red leather over red leather, tie a knot, red leather over red leather, her eyes kept sneaking glancing at him. _‘I would’_ , red leather over red leather tie a knot, _‘You’re a good brother’_. He had looked at her like he was lying, the back of his hand wiped away salty tears, _‘It’s stupid’_ . Mai had frowned them, lowering the half-braided sword handles to her lap. Her hands reach to pull loose her double buns, her back turns to him. _‘Do my hair.’_ )

( She knows for a fact Azula never wore braids and they were never close again. Not until now. )

“Did you come back through a war ship too?”

“Oh, no.” He says, the words a tired and haunted exhaled breath, face souring with unwanted memories, his body shifting away as if to back away from whatever it was those memories contain. Zuko’s jaw tenses and relaxes repeatedly before he lets out:. “Me and Uncle washed up on the Earth Kingdom shore after a few weeks on driftwood.”

That… Does sound considerably _worse_ than sneaking into a retreating war ship.

“Ah.” Mai offers, because she is not in the business of comforting people to know how to give a better response.

“Not very pleasant.”

“I can imagine.”

“What about you?” He says, jabbing her side once with one of his fingers, voice cheerful as Ty Lee and a thousand times more artificial. He’s desperate to change the subject. She will allow him. “What do you tell of yourself?"

“I graduated.” She says, and he nods, earnest as ever and almost sounding happy to hear it too. It’s good that he’s pleased, because she’s running out of major events to tell him about. “I had a brother. I moved to Omashu.”

“Agni, you must be bored out of your mind.” He cuts her off, grinning so widely he could almost be Ty Lee’s brother instead of Azula’s. 

To her abject horror, Mai feels herself snort, her lips lift minimally into a smirk.

“I wasn't kidding when I asked your sister to kill me."

Zuko's nose scrunches and his eyes crinkle in the corners with a held back bark of laughter; they're leaning into each others' spaces, grinning, jokingly and as effortlessly at ease with each other as they have always been. Mai holds the knot on her throat with both hands, tells her parent's teachings to fuck off for only a minute and says what she feels with only mild existencial fear.

“I missed you.”

It comes out like a hesitant whisper, but it softens Zuko's face all together. His grin grows into a fond smile, his eyes twinkle with warmth. His shoulders bump against hers, gently.

“I missed you too."

* * *

The sun was rising over the mountains surrounding Omashu, he was awake at some uncivilized hour of the day again, him and Katara waited fully-equipped on their respective battle modes by Appa and Aang was walking down the hill towards them with a baby in his arms and the leisure of a pacifist who was thinking a little too positively for comfort.

There are many things Sokka doesn't approve about this whole situation.

Chief amidst them is that his club was desecrated and used a Fire Nation baby's chew toy last night per order of Katara's intimidating stare, followed very closely by the Fire Nation baby himself, who was, apparently, the son of the Fire Nation Governor currently overseeing that they still had enough fuel to maintain the city smoking in some parts, likely to comply to a Fire Nation standard to make all places look profoundly miserable.

Of course, he hadn’t much appreciated the implication that some of the Fire Nation soldiers he had already come close to slaying, some of the soldiers drowned in wrecked ships in the north, maybe some of the soldiers occupying Omashu right now, had ever been like this kid, with his chubby cheeks and his small puff of soft hair like an albatrosspigeon‘s plumes. It was considerably worst to think about the boy trying out steps while Katara held him up and cooed at him in a few years like one such soldier, a murderer in his own right, another living cog to keep the war machine that was the Fire Nation army going until it devastated the whole world and burned it all to ashes.

( He decides to disapprove of Yung too, if only for the line of thought he inadvertently pushed him towards. )

He didn’t approve of the messenger hawk (though he had to admit, those were some cool animals and he wouldn’t mind having one, as long as he got the Fire Nation out of it) nor of the note strapped to it’s back in which Governor Ukano himself had offered in neat calligraphy a King for a toddler (that just _had_ to be a trap) and now, because Aang had a good heart and the naivety of a person still grappling with the fact they were indeed at war for over a century and people were indeed terrible, Sokka also didn’t approve of the whole trading-hostages mission.

It's a very uncomfortable situation, one he wishes they were not involved at all, but alas that's what being friends with the 12-year-old Avatar will get you. He thinks wistfully to the small expanse of his tribe, to every known face there, to the fact that there his chief concern was if he could fish a bigger fish, if the boys would behave for more than 20 seconds when he was teaching them how to use a boomerang, if his sister would accidentally freeze his head again with her water bending. 

( Sure, there had always been the everlasting fear of the Fire Nation attacking again, but now that Sokka consistently walked headfirst into combat with them, fighting Fire Nation Soldiers was less of an everlasting-anxiety-paranoid-fear thing and more akin to bones of the craft. )

“You realize we're probably walking right into a trap.” Sokka says out loud, in guise of a ‘good morning’ or a ‘please tell me you changed your mind’. Katara looks disapprovingly at him for violating the agreement they had had of not exactly attacking Aang’s hopeful view of things, but Spirits be damned someone had to anchor the kid to earth.

Plus, he had been quite polite about it too.

“I don't think so. “ Aang says and Sokka admits defeat internally. “I'm sure the governor wants his son back as much as we want Bumi.” The boy proceeds to declare, with a confidence Sokka is not sure exactly from where he gathers, but that must be some Avatar-self-assuredness nonsense that usually backfires. Still, he watches him smile at the sleeping baby (the future little murderer, an innocent little kid) he’s holding against his chest, and rocks him gently in his arms. “It's a new day. I have a good feeling about this.”

Which is exactly what Aang says every time before something sort of goes really bad. Sokka lifts a brow, very much not inspired by his words, and directs a dismayed look at Katara while Aang airbends his way into appa’s saddle. His sister looks at him with two or three degrees more of faith than Sokka himself is holding out and shrugs at him, her hands gesturing in the ‘what can you do?’ way before she too is climbing her way into Appa’s back.

The sun was rising over the mountains surrounding Omashu, he was awake at some uncivilized hour of the day again, him, Katara, nameless baby, Aang and Appa were going back to Omashu to trade hostages and probably have to fight within an inch of their lives before fleeing undignifiedly and Sokka was pretty sure he had not approved of one single thing happening around him since he had woken up and puts his boots on early this morning.

 _That’s what being friends with the Avatar will get you_ , he thinks, shaking his head.

Sokka holds back a sigh and silently prepares himself for the worst.

* * *

Few thing could be better for her own spirit than the way Azula stomps back towards the group and away from King Bumi, looking like she wanted to murder someone (preferably King Bumi), calling for them to regroup with a snap of her fingers (that she, somehow, makes sound both annoyed and demanding) and a flicker of her wrist, jabbing her finger towards the ground before promptly crouching down and waiting for them to do the same, a circle of her allies.

Mai glances at Zuko, who too is glancing at her, and the silent amusement at seeing her acting frustrated in the same way she would when she was 10 and trying to play grown up about it. He lets his head tilt, a short nod for them to go and fall in line already. She doesn't have any objections to this and, after glancing back to make sure Ty Lee was following them (for the love of _Agni_ , would she just _stop smiling_ like that?!) and assuring she was without betraying any flush, she sits by Zuko's right after Zuko himself has sat to Azula's right (as if he always belonged there, as if he had barely been away from her side at all, at ease and not at ease like only the two of them could ever manage) and Ty Lee sits by her right.

( Mai sneaks her another glance, fond and pleased, and finds Ty Lee smiling at her in the way she smiles when people are not paying attention. It's just a second and then she's back at the wide smile for show. Mai has half a mind to smile back, but ultimately, decides against it. )

Once they're all in formation and looking to her in expectation, Azula finally nods once, as if their obedience is satisfiable, and promptly declares: 

“He’s useless, I say we throw him out.”

In any other circumstances, Mai would agree. Bumi is crazy and annoying and a complete nuisance in the best of days, but, for now, she cannot allow that to happen less she wants to lose a member of her family. So she shakes her head, does her best to ignore the irrational fear of Azula she has been fostering since the young age of 10 by taking comfort in the equally irrational ease Zuko’s own volatile presence offers and speaks up against the Princess’ words before she can regret that bit of rational thought.

“We need him.”

All the other members of their small group turn their heads to her at the same time. It is almost intimidating. Azulla frowns at her.

“What for?”

“The rebels have kidnapped my brother.”

“Tom-Tom?” The three teenagers around her ask simultaneously and Mai backs away for a moment (because, fine, it is sort of intimidating) to avoid blinking in confusion at the various degrees of undeniable concern in their voices.

( Ty Lee she can understand. They kept in touch after she moved from Caldera, so the mention of her brother here and there might have happened, and she even came by to visit once before fleeing towards her big dream of being a circus acrobat. Ty Lee loved practically everything alive on earth and had promptly adored her baby brother, so the concern in her face and voice is not unexpected.

Azula had given her a dry ‘congratulations’ letter upon being informed of the news that her mother had given birth and some well meaning wishes that sounded more like courtly pleasantries than anything else, but never bothered to ask after neither his gender nor his name, much less expressed any desire to meet the child. So this strange version of Azula giving her own take on worry through the displeasure-strained corners of her lips and hint of a frown on her face has come out of nowhere.

Zuko is another person she could understand - could be the key word - if this had come to be under any other circumstances. They have been close friends from childhood too and he would have been all too interested in meeting and dotting on Tom Tom had he had the chance. But he hadn’t. Because he had been banished for three years now, and had been for two already when Tom Tom was born, so there was no way someone would have notified him of anything of the motherland, much less something as trivial as a governor’s newborn son’s name. Still, here he is, familiar with the name and concern tight in his voice. )

Mai decides not to try and unpack any of that. At least, not while her baby brother’s life is at risk.

“They want to exchange hostages. My brother for.…” She fixes a more nonchalant gaze than usual at the Earth King hanging a couple of feet over the floor inside his steel coffin, swaying from one side to the other while singing a tune under his breath. “The nutjob here.”

Azula lets her head tilt back to groan (growl?) out a quiet and gutural “ _For the love of Agni_.” that has Mai beginning to feel something akin to apprehension and Ty Lee leaning back with a hint of fear. Mai turns slightly to brush a hand against her arm or calm her in any way she can, but instead sees her look pleadingly at—

“ _Azula._ ” Zuko says, simply, and fixes her another one of those peculiar looks they've been exchanging.

“What?” She asks, head turning so she can properly glare at her older brother, waving a hand about with so much intent it’s as if she’s smacking the air so she doesn’t smack his face. “I can’t get frustrated now?”

Zuko barely bothers with her words but for an annoyed twitch of his brow.

“Mai’s brother is being held hostage.” He says, calmly through his restrained flaring-temper, as if he’s explaining things to a child. Almost like Lady Ursa would do when Azula did not understand that, no, threatening to set people’s hair on fire is not nice.

“We have a schedule!”

“Then you stick to it, and I stay to help her get Tom Tom back.”

“Are you serious?” Azula asks, one hand covering her eyes as if that could keep her from the massive stupidity happening around her. “You’re going to risk getting killed over a baby you don’t know?”

Zuko doesn’t even think about the subject before replying:

“Yes.” Azula brings her hand down to glare at Zuko, who looks as unrepentant as they come as he returns her gaze, shrugging. “It’s your choice.”

Now, Mai is an observant person. One must be, when born an only daughter to nobles in a war-mongering nation whose family wealth was built on politics and occupation of stolen lands. It doesn't take an observant person to see the dynamics between Zuko and Azula have changed, it doesn't take a childhood friend either, but it doesn't hurt to be both.

She glances back at Ty Lee, who looks almost acclimated to this very much out of the ordinary interaction, and questions silently just how often they are having spats like this for her friend to be acting like this is but another day of courtiers insulting each other dresses through condescending compliments back home.

The answer is probably a lot. Doesn’t mean the answer is any easier to visualise.

The silent eye-based conversation continues for a few more seconds, completely had between nods of their heads and increasingly exasperated facial expressions that pass a message she and Ty Lee (the world at large, really) are unaware of.

Finally, Azula rolls her eyes and Zuko looks smugly victorious as she sighs profusely, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“ _Fine_.” She lets out, begrudgingly. Her brother looks at Mai Ty Lee and smiles at them both. “Change of plans.”

* * *

It would be a lie to say that Azula repeating over and over that they’re doing things the Zuko Way, no matter how cruel and mockin she said them, did not fill Zuko’s chest with equal amounts of a smug pride ( _yes_ , they were doing things the Zuko Way, _Prince Zuko way_ !) and a terrible sense of anxious dread (oh _no_ , they were doing things the Zuko Way, keeping Azula from senseless slaughter and holding together their plan while keeping the whole if their treachery secret in the heart of an occupied city were all his responsibility, _oh no_ ).

Still, they were doing things Zuko Way and he was the mentioned Zuko, so he did a formidable job of only mildly worrying about the implications of that internally and put his childhood tutors’ your-cousin-died-so-now-you’re-the-Crown-Prince-so-let’s-clean-your-act-as-much-as-possible-before-you-rule-the-nation-and-ruin-us lessons to good use.

They were surprisingly useful to treasonous purposes.

It was also surprisingly useful to learn that doing things the Zuko Way didn’t mean they had to rely on Zuko Plans; instead, he got to sit back and listen to the Azula Plans and agree or disagree with what she proposed they do. Of course, none Azula Plans were approved that did not stick to the Zuko Ground Rules (1- no unnecessary manslaughter; 2- no unecessary psychological or physical torture; 3- no stealing a random baby and tricking the kidnappers into switching babies).

( He did not appreciate the plans also being tailored to cover the one Azula Ground Rule: No facilitating situations that might lead Zuko to relapse into chasing the Avatar. )

Eventually, they agreed on Plan 9.

He liked Plan 9. 

Plan 9 meant he got to ditch the armour for the action and not get caught for it. Which was great for a multitude of reasons spanning from the fact Zuko could move faster if he wasn't trying to maneuver all that steel and iron around and that (with no offense to Kazuto) he could breathe better without the sweaty smell the helmet had come with.

“I apologize.” Governor Ukano says, his words grave, himself squatting down on a cushioned pillow, hands turned upwards for clemency. “You've come to Omashu at a difficult time. At noon we're making a trade with the resistance to get Tom-Tom back.”

He looks small like this. It’s weird for him to look small. When Zuko left, Ukano looked taller than him, felt taller than him.

Three years will do things like this to you, he supposes.

His sister sits on the throne of Omashu to his left, imperiously annoyed as she is with most things, but restraining herself from any brusque actions for the time being now that he’s holding her to her word, flanked on either side by himself and one of Ukano’s guards. He thinks vaguely that if that was Fusao, the plan would run way more smoothly, but Fusao was needed in the overseeing of their uncle and if they did not knew for sure where Uncle was at all times, bhe could be brewing them trouble and, if he was, Azula would throw her word out of the window out of sheer frustration.

So it’s for the best that the man across him is not the Colonel.

Mai and Ty Lee glance up at them, ready for their cue, knelt by Mai’s parents, hands on their thighs and considerably less tense then they would usually be if they weren’t in their plan.

Mai eyes are shrewd-pleased. Ty Lee almost smiles.

Zuko catches himself almost smiling back, before he remembers he has a face plate on.

“Yes, I'm so sorry to hear about your son, but really…” Azula crosses her legs and clasps her hands over her lap, at ease with power and casual threats as no one else he has ever known. “What did you expect by just letting all the citizens leave?” Her eyes lock with the Governor's and Zuko counts to three in his mind, smiling to himself as his sister stands up as if the act of standing up is enough threat (which, with Azula, it was) and addresses the man in a harsher tone, waving her hand in a cutting gesture for emphasis. “My father has trusted you with this city and you're making a mess of things!”

“Forgive me, Princess.” Ukano says, he and his wife prostrating themselves before her.

He can say many bad things about Azula, her excessive violence and her detachment and lack of consideration for most people’s feelings, but her seamless ability to strike fear into the hearts of men was something he could begrudgingly admire.

Azula walks between the four bowing people in front of her, stopping to look over her shoulder at him, arching a brow as if to ask if her performance is adequate to his standards or merely to be smug about it.

( Zuko doesn’t bother with a scowl, she can’t see his proud expression from under the helmet. )

After a second, her face flutters back into sharp disapproval when she looks down upon the governor.

“You stay here.” She orders, and Mai and Ty Lee get up from behind her, perfectly practised. “Mai will handle the hostage trade so you don't have a chance to mess it up, and I’ll take the guards to stop the rebels outside the walls after the trade is made.” Ukano looks up at her in puzzlement before he seems to realise he’s looking at the eyes of royalty and what an absurd crossing of lines that is, before he looks back down, ashamed. 

Azula doesn’t relent, though, because with his sister there is always the need to twist the knife after you have stabbed a man. She arches a brow, her voice grows heavy with condescendment and reproach.

“You weren’t planning on actually giving them their King, right?”

A moment’s silence.

“No, of course not.”

He holds back a snort and sees his sister roll back an eye roll.

_Of course not._

Azula moves to the door, not bothering with a response, and waves her hand flippantly to indicate for the guards to follow as well. He walks side by side with the ever unsuspecting guard until they’re out of the room, away from the Governor and his wife’s hearing range, until his sister stops once again to fix them a hard glance.

“You.” She says, pointing her perfectly manicured finger at the actual-guard to his right. “Go and make sure no soldiers are in sight near the negotiation. If a single misplaced man or woman ruins my plans by standing where they felt like standing, they will pay with their lives. Understood?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“You’re dismissed.” She says, then snaps her fingers towards him and starts walking. “You, with me.”

Zuko follows, of course, because it is the plan, even if he doesn’t particularly like the fact he’s been ordered about like a dog. At the very least, he’s not walking away as fast as he can as the guard in fear of his life is doing, in the opposite direction of them.

They turn on hallways that always look the same, Earth Kingdom-built and utterly bland, and Zuko thinks that this might be the first time he has ever been in a palace in these three long years. Of course, it’s not much of a palace. Caldera's objectively better in nearly all aspects, but it is a palace. That must stand for something. Even when he had broken into the Northern Water Tribe, he hadn’t broken into the palace itself, only on the secluded secret oasis spirit part of it.

( In his opinion, the Water Tribe had better architecture than the Earth Kingdom, but the Fire Nation clearly still was leagues ahead of both. )

Finally, they turn into either the twenty-second or twenty-third hallway and Mai opens the door for a room and allows him and Azula to enter first, following close behind with Ty lee, and Zuko has to postpone all such thoughts for another time. Right now, they are going to rescue a two-year-old.

Azula closes the door behind them with one hand.

“Repeat the plan.” She demands.

“Weren’t the first 15 times enough?” He asks, taking the helmet and his boots off.

The armor was awfully stuffy given that he was also dressed with plain and lighter clothes under it for this exact moment, and he could not stand to hear the crackling of old metal any longer.

“I can never be too cautious. Or you too reckless, for what it seems. Plan?”

“Don’t we have somewhere to be? Like, on the negotiation site?”

“We do.” She concedes, but doesn’t much look pleased with it, slightly pursing her lips to the side and looking on as Mai cracks open the window he will be taking to sneak out through in order to make his way uncaught to the agreed upon spot. “Very well, let’s make this simple then. Ground rules?”

“No Avatar.” He says, rolling his eyes as he undoes the clasps of his armour. “Yes, we’ve made that one _quite_ clear.” It’s been three whole weeks and a half of no Avatar-hunting, two of them under her supervision. One would think she would stop bringing the subject up, but then one would be foolishly hopeful. “Ty Lee, could you help me with the buckles in the back—?”

* * *

So the meeting point they had apparently agreed upon (and by ‘agreed’ he meant ‘came anyways because it was written in the letter and they weren’t going to waste time sending that hawk back and forth and give the soldiers any tracking-said-bird ideas’) was a scaffold near the gigantic Fire Lord statue under construction, so that was great. Other great things about it: it was open, very vulnerable, terribly well-known by any sneaky sneaky Fire Nation soldiers orchestrating a trap and it was empty.

Like… really empty. Uncommonly empty, ghost town empty. there should be at least one guard about the place, maybe one on the walls or on the streets down below, just… somewhere. This was the Fire Nation they were talking about, they would place a dozen soldiers to guard one small bridge if needed be to wave about their militaristic prowess and perfect readiness to kill you on sight. Instead, everywhere he glanced upon, was deserted of life in the most unsettling way possible.

The day was looking like it would be absolutely lovely already.

“Where is the Governor?” He asked hushedly to Katara and Aang. “Are we _sure_ this is not a trap?”

“Well…” Katara says, sounding concerned and thoughtful as she popped the lid of her water skin for the hundredth time, that weird tick of hers. “We’ve been here long enough that if it was a trap, we would have already been trapped.”

“It’s not a trap.” Aang argued, looking cross at the both of them for the lack of full-hearted belief in the inherent goodness of people or the concept of valuing family in the Fire Nation. “The Governor is going to come, I know he will. What kind of dad wouldn’t want his kid back?”

Granted, that made for a compelling argument. It was a pity, then, for Aang’s passionate speech when the Fire-Nation-trading-hostages committee did eventually appear on the other edge of the scaffold as he was speaking and, well...

“That doesn’t look like the Governor.” He said, glancing at Katara with his best ‘this is not going to end well and I will not shut up about it later’.

Unfortunately for him, Katara was too busy staring at the three definitely-not-Governors to heed his warning.

It could not be said that he did not try.

So here’s what the committee looks like: three child soldiers, all of them either his age or Katara’s or inbetween, all female, all clearly Fire Nation. He sorts them out by scary and unnerving, just plain scary and the scariest of them all, but that would be too vague if he needs to scream about it to the others mid-fight, so he adds to that the titles of Fire-Lady-With-The-Braid, Fire-Lady-With-The-Bangs and Fire-Lady-With-The-Topknot and hopes against all hope that the whole situation has to show to him that this is a one-time thing and that their acquaintance is brief and very unremarkable.

They walk towards them on an united front, as a metal cage is lowered behind them slowly. The crazy laughter gives away who exactly is supposed to be in there, but it doesn’t make him any more prepared to see Bumi’s crazy face peeking out of the opening for his head when the cage does turn around to face them.

“Hi, everybody!” He says, chuckling, and not for the first time Sokka inquires deep into his soul about the mental state of the old man.

“You brought my brother?” Fire-Lady-With-The-Bangs asks, the second after the coffin hits the ground and shakes the wood underneath their feet with it’s weight.

Good dramatic timing, good establishing the governor couldn’t be bothered but sent a sister that seemed somewhat bothered to retrieve her brother. He chalked that information up for later use.

“He's here.” Aang says, and Sokka catches himself wishing he is wrong not for the first time in his life and that his friend’s idealistic thoughts bleed into reality in yet another distressing situation they find themselves in. It doesn't help much that the baby keeps putting it’s sticky hands all over his face. He would much prefer to have a King-possible-earthbending-master who kept his sticky hands to himself. “We're ready to trade.”

“I'm sorry, but a thought just occurred to me.” Fire-Lady-With-The-Topknot says, turning to the lady between them that seems to be in charge. “Do you mind?”

Bumi follows the conversation, shifting his eyes from one speaker to the other.

“Of course not, Princess Azula.” Fire-Lady-With-The-Bangs-Apparently-Very-Much-Not-In-Charge says, turning to Fire-Lady-With-The-Topknot.

They had a _Princess_ now, great. A Princess that was somehow _more_ scary than the Prince that chased them a round the world, just _lovely_. That ‘good feeling’ was totally paying off.

“We're trading a two year old for a king.” The scaries of the three says, looking up at Bumi.“A powerful, earthbending king?” For reasons unknown to all of the rational minded people in the world, or at the very least, to Sokka, the madman actually nods and hums his agreement towards. “It just doesn't seem like a fair trade, does it?”

FIre-Lady-With-The-Bangs stops to ponder and a very tired Southern Water Tribe warrior takes the time to admit that he actually hates being right sometimes.The daughter of the governor grants her brother, currently laying his head on Sokka’s shoulder and yawning a neutral look, before flicking her gaze to something behind them that ignites in her something akin to what smugness must look like on a normal person.

“You're right.” She says, voice impassive but walking forward with a hint of a fiery blaze to her eyes. She holds up her hand in a cutting move through the air, signalling for the guards to pull Bumi and his coffin back up and the girl with the weirdly-familiar golden eyes smiles slyly behind her. “The deal's off.”

 _Oh_ , so it _was_ a trap. Who would’ve guessed?

The chains above them begin reeling and up-up in the air goes King Lost-His-Marbles once again.

“Whoooa!” He says, as if this is something fun and not a matter of his rescue failing and him probably being incarcerated for life. It probably is fun for the guy, given how heartily he had been amused at sending his childhood friend into death dares all those months ago. Nutty bastard. “See you all later!”

“Bumi!” Aang cries out.

‘ _Oh no_ ’ Sokka thinks. _‘Please don’t’_

But Aang does, because Aang _always_ does.

He runs forward, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake that attests to the fact he’s using airbending to give a little edge to his speed, holding onto his glider. The newly-discovered addition to the worst Royal Family even steps forward and sends a mighty stream of blue flames— _what the actual hell_ , since when could _flames_ be _blue_? That was not a good sign. Weird coloured flames couldn’t possibly be a good sign. Did they feel hotter or was that just him?

What happens next isn’t much better.

Of course Aang airbends, of course he does. What else did Sokka expect? Of course the only airbender alive openly airbends in a airbender-giveaway physically-impossible jump to normal people. Of course he stops by the statue while at it to push himself off the scaffolding there to open his very airbender-giveaway glider, of course he does. Then, of course, he loses his hat when doing his trick with airbender-giveaway glider ( _for Yue’s sake, Aang_ ), leaving his very airbender-giveaway arrow tattoo exposed to three Fire Nation Child Soldiers probably trained from an early age at the art of murder and the hating of Avatars, because what else would Sokka’s life be like?

Aang holds onto his hat with his teeth.

Sokka holds on to his sanity with little success.

“The Avatar.” Fire-Nation-Lady-With-The-Topknot-Who-Is-Apparently-A-Princess groans. It’s not a happy groan, not a victorious groan, not a ‘oh, yes, let my glorious manhunt begin’; instead, it’s distinctively alike the ‘what is my life’ groan Sokka frequently lets out when faced with Avatar nonsense. The girl rolls her shoulder, and lets out a very sarcastic: “Of course it _had_ to be the Avatar.”

Sokka has about 15 seconds from that moment on to detachedly congratulate the Fire Nation as a whole for the quality of it’s child soldiers as the Fire-Nation-Lady-With-The-Topknot-Who-Is-Apparently-A-Princess goes from standing still to a run so fast he struggles to follow her with his own very healthy eyes, towards a pulley to their left, blasting through the rope that serves as a break with a mighty arc of her foot and - he cannot stress this enough - _bright blue flames_ before she grabs onto the rope and allows herself to be pulled up towards the top of the construction scaffolding as if that’s just another regular day of her insanely dangerous life.

It only takes those 15 seconds to reckon that if this girl is Prince Jerkface’s sister, they better hope these two are not joining forces to chase them around the world in the foreseeable future, otherwise they are all very, _very_ screwed.

Of course, that does nothing to the fact that there are still two Fire Nation girls on the ground with them, taking battle-ready positions. His sister takes the defensive position. Sokka takes the bison whistle from his pocket.

“We've got to get the baby out of here!” Katara cries out, right about the time Sokka blows on the whistle with all his might.

“Oh, we’ll take care of that for you.” Fire-Lady-With-The-Braid-And-The-Smile says, smiling even wider and freaking Sokka out all the more for it. “Now!”

And, of course, just like that, because life is horrible and Sokka is a punching bag, Sokka gets his feet knocked out from under him, a baby stolen from his grasp and falls on his ass so fast he can only blink and wonder what the hell is going on, lifting his head to look at the maroon-dressed half-bald guy that does a complicated flip in the air with a laughing baby in his arms as he lands.

“Zuko?!” He and Katara let out simultaneously, the same disbelieving tone to them.

“Hey there, Tom-Tom.” The Prince proceeds to say, as if he's not just performed one great feat of acrobacy for no good reason, and _then_ smiles like he's a decent human being, whose forever angry face melts into an adoring expression and he does not have a right to _that_ either. “It's so nice to meet you.” La helps him, Jerkface is making a baby voice. “Mai, he looks just like you!”

“Zuko, is this the best t—”

“Oh, he has her smile!” Fire-Lady-With-The-Braid-And-The-Smile says, leaning over to look at the baby too. “Look at him! You grew up so much!"

Sokka looks at Katara, still knocked onto his back, and finds her looking at him with the same disbelieving expression. 

“They do know we're still...?” He asks, his voice low, his finger making circles in the air.

“I'm not very sure.” She says, her hand hovering over her waterskin rather useless given the fact that their opposing side seem rather uninterested at fighting them at all. Her eyes flicker to Sokka, on the ground, then to the sky, then: “Get up, Sokka.”

He does. Sokka jumps to his feet and reaches for his boomerang, just in case, and on doing both draws all the three Fire Nation teenagers’ eyes towards them. Which cannot be very good.

Spoiler alert: it is not good.

* * *

By nature and nurture, both, Azula knew logically that her grandgrandfather Sozin’s decision of wiping out the Air Nomads was much more strategic than anything else; effectively hindering the Avatar Cycle to continue and eradicating his biggest threat in one, grand and aggressive move.

Personally, however, she thought it might just be because airbenders were a nuisance.

It had been a good move, to blast through the top of the scaffold and surprise attack them. Unfortunately, now Azula watches with a serene sort of rage as the bald kid who just so happens to be the Avatar and King Bumi who has as many brain cells in him as one of the rocks he bends fall through the air, screaming, after the chain was frozen and snapped. The boy turns the coffin around, letting the imprisoned old man hit the chutes they were aiming or first— or he would have let him, but he airbent something to break the impact and then sliding down and away, fast as anything.

Two things are undeniable in that moment: 1) she hates him, for reasons totally unrelated to her grandgrandfather’s killing en masse, and 2) he’s not getting out of this city with her hostage.

She spares her allies beneath her a glance, just about the time Zuko does his fancy acrobatics to recover Tom-Tom. At least one of them is not having to suffer through such an infuriating opponent.

( Doing things the Zuko Way was much too troublesome. She was never letting him get drunk with that sort of power again. )

It’s practised quick-thinking that guides her on a sprint towards the nearest chute to pursue the Avatar and the King down the chute in a box of her own. She can hear his laughter from afar over the dead-giveaway screaming, as if he’s not being _chased_ , not being chased _by Azula_ none less. Her anger fuels an even hotter fire on her soul. She brings her hands close, readies herself for the kata she’s bound to use.

He can keep laughing for all she cares; as long as he doesn’t dodge the fire blasts she sends his way.

Alas, her luck does not aid her in here and he does turn, smiling but not for long when he sees her flames approaching, yet still just in time to spin his airbending little staff and deflect her attacks. She narrows her eyes at him, wondering why he _had_ to come to Omashu of all Earth Kingdom cities and interfere with her plans even more. The path of their chutes join into a single line. She’s right behind him.

Good.

The boy directs a gust of wind at her, as if that’s supposed to do anything, and she parts it with ease. Honestly, it only takes clasping her hands together in a cutting move. That’s the best the world’s 100-years-too-late last hope has to offer at his best.

She blasts at him some more.

He ducks, like a coward, and turns around, flailing his little baton about in some little attempt to make his box even faster so he can run away from her. Not one beneath playing dirty apparently, he waits until he passes by wooden arches to cut them with a sweep of air, sending them collapsing on the track and over her.

 _Ha_ Azula doesn’t think so.

She is the one to duck this time, into her box, and to bring her limbs up and closer in order to protect her face and other vital organs. The dust is annoying, but she bides her time until it disperses, then counts to five.

Long enough for a fool to be relieved. She knows that by experience, with dear Zuzu.

When Azula emerges again from the box, it’s to delight in hearing him scream and hopefully roast him a little with the beam of fire she aims his way.

The Avatar drops flat over the coffin to avoid it. 

Azula is impressed at just how much more she hates him.

* * *

"Go!” Katara orders, backing up towards the ladder herself, and Sokka doesn’t argue with the most sensible thing he heard all morning.

He _knew_ this would happen, he _knew_ ‘good feeling’s were a precursor to ‘run for your life’ moments.

His sister whirls her arms in a semi-circle, sending a water whip towards the Fire-Nation-Lady-With-The-Bangs-And-The-Knives (he would need a shorter name for her later, this one was a mouthful), which should be a somewhat successful blow, if only they didn’t have a firebender on the other side to step in protectively between both blows and kick a wall of flames that reduced much of Katara’s bending to steam.

Katara groans in frustration and Sokka gets on that ladder like his life depended on it (which it probably does), stopping only when he hears her cry out and looks up to see the quick one in pink bounce back from his siter’s side and to the left of the glooming one, making it a three-person wall of danger and impending murder against his sister.

His sister waves her arms in a motion Sokka saw countless times before, many of them before getting soaked, to raise the water she had lost control over from the ground.

Except that the water doesn’t rise again.

( The Fire Nation side of the scaffold looks particularly smugly pleased about that. )

“Katara?” He asks, more than just a little anxious.

She fixes the most urgent and horrified stare she has ever granted him since they were at the Water Tribe and Aang was gone.

“ _Go_!” She yells and runs towards the ladder too.

The Fire Nation teenagers _let her_ , walking towards them with a comfortable ease of sealhounds who knew their prey couldn’t run for much longer.

Somehow, that makes it all the most horrifying.

He makes his way down the stairs in the undignified retreat he just _knew_ they would have, glancing panickedly at his sister above and her desperately flailing arms as no water actually seems to be bended.

“A little less waving, a little more bending?”

“I am trying!” She screams, right about the moment Fire-Nation-Lady-With-The-Braid hangs upside down through one of the holes in the top scaffold and tries to aim a punch at him that she does not hit, but that nearly makes Sokka fall on his ass.

“What the—” He begins, but Katara screams louder.

“Don’t let her touch you!”

He slides down the stairs rather fast after that.

Sokka lands on the floor to the bottom of the scaffold.

“Who—?”

Which is about the time he lets out a very unmanly squeal and ducks before throwing knives can cut him. 

That’s all the sign he needs, honestly, and Appa is around the corner. It was lovely seeing Omashu again, a down ride down memory lane, really. It was also debatably nice to see King Bumi remains as insane as ever and strangely sad to see a Fire Nation baby be reunited with Fire Nation people who are out to murder him.

He’s going to leave now.

Sokka climbs onto Appa’s back with panicked littles ‘hey buddy, we have to _go_ ’, before turning the bison towards Katara, who is cornered at the edge of the top scaffold.

“How are you gonna fight without your bending?” He hears the governor’s daughter taunt her, mockingly, having pulled a horrifying three edged blade from her robes as if that’s just something FIre Nation girls walk around with, taking aim at Katara leisurely.

A hot white anger overtakes Sokka, from the bottom of the stomach to the rest of him, because no one should be able to terrify his sister quite this much and then laugh at her as they threaten death. He picks his boomerang from it’s sheath, aims it at her head and throws it at full force, hoping to at the very least cause some lasting damage.

The weapon is about to make contact with her head when he remembers his second less favorite person is there, right about the moment Prince Stupid Haircut jumps into the air (still with a baby in his arms, a laughing baby who was enjoying this too much because he didn't know what slaughter looked like) and does another dramatical spin Sokka did not know he could do and was begrudgingly admiring his form and the ease he could perform it, all to kick Sokka’s boomerang back at him. He’s shocked, but not shocked enough to not grab his weapon mid-air when it comes back to him.

The Prince lands, crouched by the governor’s daughter's side before standing up, a smug grin to his face, a baby to his arms and a defiant gleam to his eyes.

“I don't think so.”

Sokka’s brain blanks out for a minute, staring at him and trying to fit together _that expression_ and what it's apparently doing to him and the rest of the man who has on that expression.

Fortunately, Appa’s mind does not blank out, and he turns to slam his tail in between Katara and the rest of her murderers-to-be, creating some healthy distance.

“What are you waiting for?” He screams. “Climb up!”

“But the baby!”

Sokka is going to lose his damn mind.

“Forget about the baby!” He cries out, waving towards the three looming Fire Nation teenagers, with one happy baby among them. “He is just fine! We have to leave!”

Katara seems conflicted for the span of four to five seconds before another one of those stiletto knives land near her feet. From there on, the urge of survival does it's outstanding job of getting Katara to jump onto Appa's back and the bison does it's own great job of flying off to as far away of the murder trio as they can.

“There's Aang!” Katara says, pointing to her left, at a rapidly speeding Aang atop a still iron box-ed Bumi.

With a Fire Nation Princess chasing him around.

Because of course. What else did Sokka ever expect?

 _This is what being the Avatar's friend gets you_ , he laments to himself, _High blood pressure_.

“We can catch him!”

Appa, consistently the best and most non-troubling member of their group, gives a growl of agreement and changes course towards his airbending master when Sokka takes his reins.

* * *

“He’s taking the King!” Ty Lee gasps.

It is very clear she means for that to be merely observational and has no intention to actually do anything about it, not with her relaxed posture and both her hands behind her back as she spares the chaotic scene below them some of her detached curiosity.

Mai looks away from the ruined scaffold and to the Prince making baby talk with her baby brother, and curiously leans over said scaffold to glance at the gigantic flying beast trying to catch up with the Avatar _surfing_ on his friend, the 100 year old king in a coffin, while yelling loudly.

Truly, it is madness. Much like a monorail crash, she found that she could not look away. 

“Where is Azula?” Zuko asks, narrowing his eyes suspiciously while looking around the vast Azula-less scaffold around them.

That’s about the moment Azula lands on the same chute, as if on cue, hot in the trails of the still screaming Avatar — though apparently the screaming was less incoherent and more attempts of talking while faced with the roar of the wind in high speed — and proceeding to slide down the rest of her chase’s path on foot.

“I thought we weren’t going to chase the Avatar anymore!” Zuko exclaims, highly offended before bouncing the slightly startled baby in his arms soothingly and passing him to Mai, who merely blinks startled upon having her brother returned to her arms. “Here, take him. I’ll be right back.”

Which, Mai guesses, was Zuko's own cue to promptly throw himself off the scaffold and slide down the support beams, clinging to them with hands and spite alone because that was exactly what Zuko did.

In front of her very own eyes. Before she could form one word. Said word being ‘what’.

This, she thinks, is now nearing on insanity. It's a monorail accident with two monorails, a war balloon and an ostrichorse running circles around the crash.

“This is going to be a really messy coup, huh?” Ty Lee says good-naturedly before cooing at Tom-Tom, who squeals in delight upon having a friendly, smiling face placed in front of him. “Aw, hello, little guy! You’re so cute!”

Mai decides that if anything, she’s certainly never going to be bored again.

* * *

Azula is starting to resent Fire Lord Sozin, right now, for having decimated so many airbenders but missed the most annoying of them all.

She lands on the chute, out of her freshly-destroyed box, thanks to the fact that the Avatar now knows how to earthbend, and slides some more on foot until her speed dies down and she eventually halts, left with nothing more than glaring daggers as her prey who continue their descent.

Sounds of sliding feet come from behind her, and she twists viciously, two fingers ready to incinerate any Avatar-loving companions that might think she’s easy prey only because she is alone in a remote location. 

“Don’t even think of blowing fire at my face again!”

_For Agni’s sake—_

“What are _you_ doing here?” She hisses at him, frustrated enough without her brother breaking ground rules and trying to chase the Avatar when she was already planning on murdering the Avatar.

Her brother shifts from foot to foot, unsurely, then takes a step back to put some distance between them.

“I saw the explosion, then I didn’t see your box slide down.” He explains. “I was worried you were in trouble.”

Azula’s first instinct is, naturally, to scoff at something as ridiculous as that sentence. Zuko’s first expectation seems to be much like that too, looking over her fleetingly as if he’s convinced she will scold him for his worries. And isn’t that a concept? His worries.

A brother who’s genuinely worried about her, as if they’re only little kids again.

She can confidently say they’re both equally surprised when the scoffing does not come.

“Of course they didn’t strike me down, Zuzu.” She says instead, condescending less he mistakes her for reassuring, “Who do you take me for? You?”

“I haven’t been stricken down by the Avatar many more times than you.” He argues over some mock offense, because, much like her, it’s better to be taken as angry than concerned as he frowns at her.

“That might be the case, but while you took three years to find him.” Azula rolls her eyes, turning to wave at the general direction of her escaping but cornered targets. “I seem to have found him in two days, without even really trying.”

Which is about the time she sees the King earthbend his own coffin into stopping and all good feelings regarding her and Zuko's growing camaraderie wither under the cholerous rage she is engulfed by as the King starts _climbing the chutes back up._

“What?” She hears Zuko ask. “Is that…?”

But she doesn’t move. She can’t quite move, not when faced with a spectacle like this, in which a powerful earthbender willingly earthends a rock into bringing him back into confinement. Azula remains there, still as the stone statue being built into their father’s likeness, until the King’s stupid face is under her, his coffin resting agaisnt her boot.

“Hello again!” He greets cheerily.

“You could earthbend the whole time?!” Azula hisses out the question, feeling very inclined to tearing her hair out by the handful.

“He can earthbend?! In there?!” Zuko asks, looking from her to the king repeatedly. “How is that even possible?!”

Azula pinches the bridge of her nose and wills herself under control through much effort.

“Why are you even imprisoned?” She asks, patiently, or as patiently as she can get, under these circumstances.

“I’m biding my time.” Bumi says, with a shrug.

She decides she does not, in fact, have to deal with this. He can climb his way back to his assigned hanging spot.

Azula turns around in search of something to burn down.

* * *

“So we're moving on without the baby and without the King?” Sokka asks, not impressed or pleased in the slightest as Aang airbends himself onto Appa’s head, turning the giant bison away from the city Sokka told him not to walk into to begin with. He throws his hands up, in existential distress. “Truly a great day! I even had the chance to be humiliated by Prince Angry pants and the three psychos! Where did _that guy_ even come from?!”

“Sokka.” Katara says, glancing at him resentfully as she flexes her hands repeatedly, trying to bring… the bending back to her fingers, or something. “We've all had a bad day, okay? You don't need to take it out on us."

“But, _Katara_ , it's a new day!" “I thought we had a good feeling about it!”

If he does get a violent torrent of water thrown at his face. He can't say it was altogether unwarranted, but…

“Oh, _now_ you have your bending, is it?”

* * *

Azula is still pondering about the murdering of Earth Kings and the absolute overall uselessness of Avatars when her brother finds her in the walls outside.

“I think the Avatar is going North next.” Zuko declares, nodding as if he just made a fair assessment and the information is anything other than an absolutely unprompted and unneeded input.

She cannot believe and she will never admit it, but she misses meditation hours with Uncle Iroh, because at least in those hours Zuko was bound to be silent.

She inhales deeply, counts to three, thinks of burning cities to the ground, then exhales.

“And that information is valuable to me because…?”

“Because…” He says, the picture of genuine confusion, alternating glances between her and the blue horizon for some forsaken reason. “We are… chasing the Avatar?”

She’s going to murder him.

“What in the name of Agni gave you the impression we're going to chase the Avatar?”

He hesitates, again, which means something more stupid than usual is bound to follow.

“You...?”

“ _Me?_!” Azula yells, not shrieks, because princesses do not shriek.

“You were chasing him through the chutes!” Zuko argues, waving at the city behind them.

“He was _kidnapping_ _our hostage_!”

“Well, it looked like it was chasing to me!”

Azula reckons there is no one looking and no one would really fault her for it.

Zuko cries out indignantly when she does break protocol and slaps him in the back of the head.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the work! MuffinLance, if you per chance read this, I adore your work, never change and I hope you and Mini Muffin are having a great day and stating safe!
> 
> If you're not MuffinLance and you're reading this, I hope you too have a great day and remain safe! Thank you so much for clicking the link at all.
> 
> Anyone who might want to pester me can do so back on Tumblr, under @amatchforyourmadness!


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